Book: Contemptible

C >> Casualty >> Contemptible




When the Subaltern came up the "show" was over. There were a great many
dead Germans lying, as they had died, behind the embankment. The thought
of taking something which they had worn never occurred to him. If it had
been he would have dismissed it on the grounds that there was no means
of sending such things home, while to add to the weight and worry of his
kit by carrying a "Pickelhaube" about, indefinitely, for the rest of
the campaign, was, of course, unthinkable.

Then the "rally" sounded, and the companies that had taken part in the
attack began to re-form. There was a considerable delay before two of
the platoons appeared at the rallying point. The men did not come in a
body but by driblets. He began to get nervous about the other two
Subalterns, and in a few minutes went to see what had happened to them.

"Lord bless you, sir, 'e's all right," said a man in answer to the
Subaltern's inquiry. "We wouldn't let no harm come to '_im_." The man
who spoke was an old soldier whom he knew well, tall, wiry,
commanding--the sort of man that a young officer leans upon, and who,
reciprocally, relies on his officer. In the old Peace days, if any
special job that required intelligence or reliance were going, he always
saw that this man got it. He had made a sort of pet of him; and now he
was openly, frankly displaying a state of mind akin to worship towards
another officer. It was defection, rank desertion. A ridiculous feeling
of jealousy surged up in the Subaltern's mind, as he turned back towards
the Company.

As he regained the road, many stretchers passed. They were no longer
things of tragedy, to be passed by with a shudder and averted eyes--he
was getting used to horror.




CHAPTER XX

DEFENCE


It was now midday, and the Officers of the two companies that had been
deployed gathered round the mess-cart. The remaining companies, who had
been kept in local reserve during the fight, were sent out to bury the
dead. The rain began to fall in torrents, and somehow the memory of
crouching under the mess-cart to get shelter has left a far more
definite and indelible impression upon the Subaltern's mind than the
actual moments of danger and excitement.

A large band of prisoners had been captured by our troops that day.
Small detachments had from time to time been captured ever since the
turn at Chaumes, but this was different. There were long lines of them,
standing bolt upright, and weaponless. The Subaltern looked at them
curiously. They struck him as on the whole taller than the English, and
their faces were not brown, but grey. He admired their coats, there was
a martial air in the long sweep of them. And he confessed that one
looked far more of a soldier in a helmet. There is a ferocity about the
things, a grimness well suited to a soldier.... Not that clothes make
the man.

He sternly refused himself the pleasure of going to get a closer sight
of them. He wanted very badly to see them, perhaps to talk French with
them, but a feeling that it was perhaps _infra dignitatem_ debarred him.
The men, however, had no such scruples. They crowded round their
captives, and slowly and silently surveyed them. They looked at them
with the same sort of interest that one displays towards an animal in
the Zoo, and the Germans paid just as much attention to their regard as
Zoo animals do. Considering that only a short hour ago they had been
trying to take each other's lives, there seemed to be an appalling lack
of emotion in either party. Fully half an hour the Tommies inspected
them thus. Then, with infinite deliberation, one man produced a packet
of "Caporal" cigarettes and offered one, with an impassive countenance,
to a German. As far as the Subaltern could see, not a single word was
exchanged nor a gesture made. They did not move away until it was time
to fall in.

The advance was continued until it was dark, and intermittent firing was
heard throughout the afternoon on either flank. The German retreat,
which had in its first stages been conducted with such masterly skill,
was rapidly developing into a hurried and ill-conducted movement, that
bade fair to lead to disaster. Reports of large quantities of prisoners
were coming in more frequently than ever.

It was at this time that the Subaltern first heard the now notorious
story of the German who had been at the Savoy, and who gave himself up
to the Officer whom he recognised as an old habitue. One of the Officers
in the Regiment said that this had happened to him, and was
believed--for the moment. Later on, Officers out of every corps solemnly
related similar experiences, with occasional variations in the name of
the hotel. Usually it was the Savoy or the Ritz; less often the Carlton,
or even the Cecil, but the "Pic" or the "Troc" were absolutely barred.
The story multiplied so exceedingly that one began to suspect that the
entire German corps in front was exclusively composed of ex-waiters of
smart London hotels.

Another sign that the Germans were beginning to be thrust back more
quickly than they liked was the frequent abandonment of transport. Whole
trains of motor lorries that had been hastily burned and left by the
roadside, and all sorts of vehicles with broken wheels, were constantly
being passed. The Subaltern remembers seeing a governess cart, and
wondering what use the Germans had found for it. Perhaps a German
colonel had been driven gravely in it, at the head of his men. He
wondered whether the solemn Huns would have been capable of seeing the
humour of such a situation.

Horses, too, seemed to have been slaughtered by the score. They looked
like toy horses, nursery things of wood. Their faces were so unreal,
their expressions so glassy. They lay in such odd postures, with their
hoofs sticking so stiffly in the air. It seemed as if they were toys,
and were lying just as children had upset them. Even their dimensions
seemed absurd. Their bodies had swollen to tremendous sizes, destroying
the symmetry of life, confirming the illusion of unreality.

The sight of these carcases burning in the sun, with buzzing myriads of
flies scintillating duskily over their unshod hides, excited a pity that
was almost as deep as his pity for slain human beings. After all, men
came to the war with few illusions, and a very complete knowledge of the
price to be paid. They knew why they were there, what they were doing,
and what they might expect. They could be buoyed up by victory, downcast
by defeat. Above all, they had a Cause, something to fight for, and if
Fate should so decree, something to die for. But these horses were
different; they could neither know nor understand these things. Poor,
dumb animals, a few weeks ago they had been drawing their carts, eating
their oats, and grazing contentedly in their fields. And then suddenly
they were seized by masters they did not know, raced away to places
foreign to them, made to draw loads too great for them, tended
irregularly, or not at all, and when their strength failed, and they
could no longer do their work, a bullet through the brain ended their
misery. Their lot was almost worse than the soldiers'!

To the Subaltern it seemed an added indictment of war that these
wretched animals should be flung into that vortex of slaughter. He
pitied them intensely, the sight of them hurt him; and the smell of them
nauseated him. Every memory of the whole advance is saturated with that
odour. It was pungent, vigorous, demoralising. It filled the air, and
one's lungs shrank before it. Once, when a man drove his pick through
the crisp, inflated side, a gas spurted out that was positively
asphyxiating and intolerable.

However much transport the Germans abandoned, however severe the losses
they sustained, they always found time to break open every estaminet
they passed, and drain it dry. Wretched inns and broken bottles proved
to be just as reliable a clue to their passing as the smell of them.




CHAPTER XXI

THE DEFENCE OF THE BRANDY


The next morning two companies were detached from the Battalion as
escort to a brigade of artillery. The other two companies, who had
returned during the night, did not seem to be greatly upset by their
gruesome task of burying the dead.

They did not come in contact with the enemy, and no outstanding incident
impressed itself upon the Subaltern's mind. The heat had abated with
dramatic swiftness. A wind that was almost chilly swept the plains,
driving grey clouds continually across the sun. The summer was over.
That day they joined battle with the outposts of a foe that was to prove
more hateful and persistent than the German winter.

The name of a village known as Suchy-le-Chateau figured on many of the
signposts that they passed, but they never arrived there, and, branching
off east of Braisne, they came upon the remainder of the Battalion,
drawn up in a stubble field.

A driving rain had begun to fall early in the afternoon, and when at
length the march was finished their condition was deplorable. Though
tired out with a long day's march, they dared not rest, because to lie
down in the sodden straw was to court sickness. Their boots, worn and
unsoled, offered no resistance whatever to the damp. Very soon they
could hear their sodden socks squelching with water as they walked. A
night of veritable horror lay in front of them; they were appalled with
the prospect of it. The rain seemed to mock at the completeness of their
misery.

However, the Fates were kind, for the General, happening to pass, took
pity on them and allowed them to be billeted in the outhouses of a farm
near by. The sense of relief which this move gave to the Subaltern was
too huge to describe. Contentment took possession of him utterly. The
tension of his nerves and muscles relaxed: he thought that the worries
and hardships of that day, at least, were over.

But he was wrong.

No sooner had his Platoon wearily thrown their rifles and equipment into
the musty barn that was allotted to them, than the Colonel told him that
he would have to sleep with his men, the reason being that the owner of
the farm, on the approach of the Germans, had hidden a large stock of
brandy beneath the straw in the very barn that his men had entered. The
farmer had asked the Colonel to save his liquor from the troops, and the
Colonel, with horrible visions of a regiment unmanageable and madly
intoxicated before his eyes, replied that most assuredly he would see
that the men did not get hold of the brandy. The Subaltern told his
sergeant, but otherwise the proximity of bliss was kept a strict secret
from the men.

Throughout the whole of that long day the Subaltern had been looking
forward to, longing for, and idealising the rest which was to follow
after the labours of the day. And now that it had at last been achieved,
it proved to be a very poor imitation of the ideal rest and slumber that
he had been yearning for. To begin with, the delays before quarters were
settled upon were interminable. And then this news about the brandy. The
evening meal was delayed almost a couple of hours, and every minute of
the delay annoyed him, because it was so much precious time for sleep
lost. Even when the meal arrived, it proved to be insufficient, and he
was still hungry, cold and damp, when at last he hobbled across the yard
to the barn.

The place had no ventilation. The air was foul with the smell of damp
grain, and men, and wet boots. He hesitated at the door; he would rather
have slept in the open air, but the yard was inches deep in mud and
manure. He groped forward, and at every inch that he penetrated further
into the place, the air seemed to become thicker, more humid, more foul.
In the thick darkness his foot stumbled on the sleeping form of a man,
who rolled over and swore drowsily. At last, after interminable feeling
in the darkness, and balancing himself on sacks of grain, he attained
the corner where the bottles lay buried, and threw himself down to
sleep.

But sleep was impossible. In spite of the insupportable atmosphere he
remained cold. Every second some one was moving! One instant a man would
shuffle and cough in one corner, then some one would grunt and groan as
he turned restlessly in his sleep, and the happier few who had achieved
slumber would snore laboriously. Now and then a man would rise shakily
to his feet and thread his way unsteadily to the door, kicking up
against recumbent forms as he went, and evoking language as murky as the
atmosphere. The Subaltern felt a savage joy in the recriminations and
expletives that filled the air. Like lightning, they relieved the
thunder-pressure of the air.




CHAPTER XXII

STRATEGY AS YOU LIKE IT


Dawn found them already paraded in the farmyard, shivering, and not much
better rested than when they had entered the barn of dreadful memory the
night before. Each day the accumulation of fatigue and nerve-strain
became greater; each day it grew harder to drag the weary body to its
feet, and trudge onwards. Though the tide of victory had turned, though
every yard they covered was precious ground re-won, they longed very
intensely for a lull. The Subaltern felt in a dim way that the point
beyond which flesh and blood could not endure was not very far ahead. As
it was, he marvelled at himself.

During the course of the morning the Captain returned to the Company,
with a little map, and a great deal of information concerning the
strategy of the war, about which everybody knew so little.

To begin at the beginning, he said that the Allies had begun the
campaign under two great disadvantages. The first was their very serious
numerical inferiority in forces that could be immediately used. If
numbers alone counted, the Germans were bound to win until the French
were fully mobilised.

The other disadvantage was the pre-conceived notion that the German
Government would keep its word with regard to the violation of Belgian
neutrality. If this had been observed, it would have been almost a
strategical impossibility to turn the Allied left flank. The attack in
force was expected to be made in the Lorraine area. Consequently, when
it became evident that the main German effort was to be launched through
Belgium, all pre-conceived plans of French concentration had either to
be abandoned, or, at any rate, greatly modified in order to meet the
enemy offensive from an unexpected quarter.

After their unexpected set-back at Liege, the invaders met with little
resistance from the Belgian army, which was, of course, hopelessly
outnumbered, and their armies were rapidly forming up on a line north of
the Sambre, which roughly extended south-east by east to north-west by
west. Meanwhile, the initial French offensive which had been launched in
the region of the Vosges had resulted in the temporary capture of
Muelhouse, and had then been abandoned in order to face the threatening
disaster from the north.

It was thought advisable to wait until the concentration of the English
Army was completed, then, to comply with an obvious rule of strategy
which says, "Always close with your enemy when and wherever he shows
himself, in order to discover and hold him to his dispositions," a
general advance was made along the whole centre and left of the Allied
line. The line swung forward, and perhaps some day one of the handful
of men who know will tell exactly what was the object of this movement.
Was it meant to join battle in all seriousness with the enemy, and to
drive him from Belgium, or was it just a precautionary measure to hold
and delay him? Probably the latter. The Allied Generalissimo had
probably made up his mind to the fact that the first battle--the battle
in Belgium--was already lost by the Allies' lateness in concentration.
Regarded in this light the battle in Belgium was undoubtedly the
greatest rear-guard action in History.

On account of a possible under-estimation of the enemy's strength, and
of the completeness of his dispositions, the Allies found themselves,
when the lines first clashed, in a more serious position than they
probably anticipated. The enemy gained two initial successes that
decided, past doubt, the fate of the battle which was now raging along
the whole front from Mons to Muelhouse. Namur, the fortress which had
enjoyed a reputation as the Port Arthur of Europe, fell before the
weight of the German siege howitzer in a few days. The magnitude of the
disaster appalled the whole world, for indirectly the piercing of these
forts laid open the road to Paris. Nor was this all. The enemy forced
the passage of the Sambre at Charleroi, and threatened to cut the Allied
centre from the left. The British Army, on the extreme left, found
itself confronted by a numerical superiority of nearly three to one,
while its left flank and lines of communication with Havre were
seriously menaced by a huge body of Uhlan cavalry. In a word, the
positions taken up by the whole of the Allied centre and left were no
longer tenable. To hang on would have been to court disaster. There was
nothing for it but to cut and go.

But the Allies did not meet with the same ill luck along the whole line.
The small successes gained on the right, in Alsace, had apparently been
consolidated. The German tide through Luxembourg was stemmed, and, even
though the Kaiser himself witnessed its bombardment, Nancy held out. But
the trump card in the Allies' hand was Verdun. De Castlenau clung
resolutely to the chain of forts crowning the heights in front of the
town, and his successful defence saved Paris. Whatever might happen to
the centre and left, the right, at any rate, seemed safe.

The Allied Generalissimo was forced to give way before the fury of the
German onslaught in Belgium. He withdrew his armies while there was yet
time, thus averting irrevocable disaster. According to all the rules of
the game, he should have retired his whole line southwards, in order to
ensure the safety of Paris. But he did not throw his highest trump: he
clung to Verdun, and left Paris exposed. His armies retreated, not on
the Capital, but in a sweeping movement that was hinged upon Verdun. He
realised that the fate of Paris depended not upon its being covered by
the Allies, but upon the fate of the second great battle of the war.

Meanwhile, the great retreat--this hinging movement--continued, very
slowly near Verdun, very, very swiftly on the left. Days passed; no
attempt was made to check the enemy's advance, and the passing of each
day left Paris more exposed. The world gasped at the breathless
swiftness with which disaster seemed to be swooping down upon the
Capital. But every day de Castlenau was consolidating his defence of
Verdun, in face of tremendous odds; and every day the ferocity of the
German onrush waned. The line continued to swing resolutely back, until
such time as a completed mobilisation should allow the Allies to turn
upon the enemy in greater force, in their own time, and on chosen
ground. A premature effort would have spoiled all. They had to wait for
their chance.

Meanwhile, rapid concentrations of reserves were taking place behind the
line, the most famous instance of which was the Reserve Army moved out
of Paris by General Gallieni in taxis, fiacres, and any vehicle the
authorities could commandeer to ensure that the Army should be in its
place in time. It was in its place. Just as the world was beginning to
say that the war was over, General Joffre decided that the iron was hot,
that the time to strike had arrived. "The moment has come," he wrote,
"to die where you stand, rather than give way."

The outlook changed from black to rose with the completeness and ease of
a pantomime transformation scene. The Verdun heights remained
impregnable. The whole line turned and fought where it stood. The
enemy, worn out by his exertions, stretched his line of communications
to breaking-point, and it was said that his supplies of food and
munitions had come temporarily very near to collapse. The Allies checked
him. He could not even hold his own. In two days he was moving back,
away from Paris.

The economic reasons were not the only factors in his downfall. He was
beaten by the Allied morale, and also by the Allied strategy. Von Kluck,
the Commander of the German right, hurrying on in an abortive pursuit of
the British Army, found that he was outflanked by the army of Gallieni,
which, stronger than his own, threatened his line of communications. To
press on towards Paris would have been suicidal. To linger in his
present position would have been to court capture. He, therefore, began
the famous march across the French front, by which he hoped to gain
touch with the army on his left, and as he turned, the British and
French fell upon him simultaneously, as in a vice. For a day the line
wavered irresolutely, then Von Kluck realised that the pendulum of
success was beginning to swing the other way. He had to retire or face
irretrievable disaster.

Thus Paris was saved. The tremendous blow aimed at it was parried, and
it seemed as if the striker tottered, as if he had overreached his
strength. The treachery with which the Germans had inaugurated the
movement, the brutality and cruelty with which they had carried it
through, were brought to nothing before the superior morale of the
Allied troops, and the matchless strategy of their Commander.

The enemy was checked along the whole line, but the Allies were not
satisfied with that. The French flung themselves upon the invader with a
ferocity and heroism that was positively reminiscent of the Napoleonic
legends. General Foch, in command of the General Reserve, achieved the
culminating success in this victory, known as the Battle of the Marne.
He broke the enemy's line: he thrust into the gap a wedge so powerful
that the enemy was forced to give way on either side of it, because his
centre was broken. The victory of the Marne was assured.

Slowly at first, latterly with increasing speed, the Allies were hurling
the enemy northwards. He was becoming more demoralised every day. A
victory even greater than the Marne was in sight.

* * * * *

"And that," said the Captain, "is where we are at present."

"They'll turn on us in a day or two, and then there'll be the devil of a
fight," said the Senior Subaltern.

Everybody laughed at him, but they had an uneasy feeling that he would
be right.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE LAST ADVANCE


While he was dreaming, the time slipped by almost unnoticed. It was not
until eleven o'clock that a halt was made. He could just discern in the
darkness the dim outlines of what appeared to be a large farm-house,
surrounded by barns and outhouses. Some transport had got jammed in the
yard. He could hear the creak of wheels, the stamping of hoofs, and
shouts. There was not a light anywhere, and they waited for half-an-hour
that seemed interminable, for they were drenched through, and tired, and
were longing for any cover out of the wet. Sounds of shuffling were
heard in front, and at last they found themselves on the move again.
Another fifty yards, as far as a gate in a wall, and then they stuck
again. More weary, exasperating minutes; then at last the bedraggled
figure of the Captain loomed out of the darkness.

"Is that you?" he asked.

"All right, lead round here!"

He led them to a large barn, and they turned in to sleep just as they
were. No supper, not a fire to dry their sodden clothes, not a blanket
to cover their chilled bodies.

As usual, they got to sleep somehow, and as usual dawn came about thirty
hours before they were ready for it.

They moved out immediately, and continued the course of the march. The
rain-laden clouds had rolled completely away. The sky looked hard and
was scarcely blue; the country was swept by a strong nipping wind, for
which they were very thankful, since it served to dry their clothes.

The Machine-gun Officer, passing down the Battalion, walked with them
while he told them two wonderful stories. It may have been crude, but in
another way it was almost as satisfying as breakfast.

He solemnly explained to them that the war was nearly over. The Germans,
lured into making this tremendous and unnecessary effort to capture
Paris, had left their eastern front dangerously weak. The Russians were
pouring into Germany in their millions. The Cossacks were already around
Posen. Nobody quite knew where Posen was, but it sounded deliciously
like Potsdam. Anyway, they would be there in a month.

A few surplus millions, who, presumably on account of the crush, could
not burst into Germany by the quickest route, had been despatched, _via_
Archangel, to the northern coast of Scotland. Their progress
thenceforwards is, of course, notorious. By now they had safely landed
at Antwerp, and had pursued a career that must have bored them as
monotonously victorious. Namur, "and all those places" had been
captured, and at that moment Maubeuge was being relieved. The Germans
were being sandwiched between the victorious Russian, French and British
Arms. They could only escape as through the neck of a bottle. And the
end of the war was so near, and so definite, that it almost lacked
interest.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.