A Test to Destruction (16 page)

Back in the old position near the Cathedral, Phillip re-read ‘Spectre's' letter. His orders were clear: to delay any attack debouching from AVEULUY.

This village, he knew from living in the valley during the winter of 1916–17, was on the left bank of the river; the wood was on the other bank. The enemy was across the river. Should they withdraw? The alternative was to be cut off. He must
make up his mind. He decided to wait until the m-g barrage slackened; but it increased. They remained. Dusk came on. Scouts came back with reports of many Germans entering the town on all sides east of the river. When night fell Phillip realized that all ways of withdrawal were ringed by flares.

*

In his room within the Château at G.H.Q., Montreuil, the British Commander-in-Chief was writing in his diary.

At this meeting, one of the ‘frocks' from Whitehall took the Chief of the Imperial General Staff aside and asked how he could best help.

“By leaving the soldiers alone,” replied the C.I.G.S. to Lord Milner.

*

No. 1 Composite battalion, occupying two hundred yards of the west bank of the river, lay in moonlight which seemed to be shedding pollen upon pink flowers of frost growing in glitter upon the ruins about them. Sentries stood swinging arms, and blowing upon painful fingers. Phillip had put a piece of match-stick under his left eye-lid, to keep himself awake.

Fires were burning in Albert, up by the river; probably, he thought, the British hutments. Curiously stratified layers of mist,
after arising from the river and creeping over the Grand' Place, diffused the light of flames.

Were they surrounded? Occasional flares—German parachute ‘lilies' larger and whiter than the British Very light-balls—indicated that the Germans held the railway embankment four hundred yards behind them; but how far down through the western suburbs to what he imagined from the map to be the level-crossing over the Amiens road, were they?

Another arc of lights began to arise around the south-eastern outskirts of the town. The second jaw of pincers! But the jaws were not entirely closed. Was there a gap there? Were their own troops holding on to a sort of bridge-head across the Amiens road? Perhaps for a counter-stroke against the German forces down south, in the event of them getting to the railway troop sidings outside Amiens? Ought he to try to get through the gap? Without their helmets, to lessen chance of immediate recognition? The freezing mists would help them, anyway the Germans were as balled-up as themselves.

Phillip had brought back with him a dozen bottles of
Auld
Scottie
from the E.F.C. after Brendon had gone, following on the suggestion that a German drunk was as good as a German out of action. Five of these bottles had gone into the water-bottles of the men, well diluted. The rosy glows seen through fog of smoke were now being transferred to the battalion. And also it would seem, to many of the Germans, judging by the singing and excited shouts in front. He discussed this with Kidd and the Fusilier acting-adjutant.

“You know, this reminds me of my grandfather reading the prologue from
Henry
the
Fifth
when I was a boy. The word ‘umbered' made me shiver. I looked it up in the glossary of my sister's Shakespeare school prize, and it said, ‘discovered by gleam of fire'.”

A burst of cheering came from the direction of the E.F. Canteen.

“Look here, old boy,” said Kidd, acting-parts of devil-may-care and
pukka
sahib
raised by the whiskey, “how about sending up Bill Kidd with a party to bomb the bastards? Quite frankly”—his voice now took on a drawl—“I don't fancy myself sitting here and listening to bilge from a bloody silly play by Shakespeare, who was probably Bacon anyway, and who knew damn-all about soldiering, old boy.”

“Well, for one thing a bombing raid would give away our position.”

“What's the idea, then? To remain freezing here on our arses until morning comes, and then put up the white flag?”

“‘Spectre's' orders are to hang on to delay any attack, and then——”

“To hell with that for a tale! The chap on the spot is supposed to show a little initiative, old boy, take it from Bill Kidd! I don't care a damn if you are my superior officer, or not! I've had my captaincy with the old Eighth a damn sight longer than you've had yours with the regiment, after being kicked out of the Machine Gun Corps, and don't you forget it!”

Phillip did not reply. Kidd's deterioration after rapid whiskey drinking was repellent: an underlying coarseness of part of his nature showed itself in roughness of contempt of those he felt to be weaker than himself.

The Fusilier subaltern, whose name Phillip couldn't remember, said with a slight stutter, “Didn't Henry the Fifth cross the Somme not far from here, sir, on the way to Agincourt, or was it Crécy? I'm a bit rusty about my history, I'm afraid.”

“Christ, you two make me sick!”

Phillip said, “I am now going to look around by myself. I leave you, Bill, in charge until I return.” He took off helmet and equipment. “On no account allow any firing, but remain quiet until I return. I shan't be long. But if I do not come back, your orders are to make for the Amiens road, leaving your helmets here. Leave in twos and threes, as casually as possible, with rifles slung. When away from the Square, have the men close up, but not in any regular formation. Straggle out a bit, as though you are a German relief party. I'm pretty sure that it's as big a mix-up with them as it is for us. The only chance of getting back is to move slowly through their outposts. They won't know who you are in the mist, if you go casually.”

He set off, hoe-handle tapping the ground as he walked towards the Square.

*

He imagined the wraith of Father Aloysius braving the mort blast of machine-guns and shells in no-man's-land of July the First, that blue morning with the sun glaring into the eyes of the attacking troops, and rising up to shine upon the dead. He saw himself setting out from the wood below Wytschaete on
Christmas Day 1914, on a bicycle, passing the football match between German and British: and pedalling along the cobbled road of the Messines ridge down to Ploegsteert wood, freewheeling with the thought that no harm could come to him on the day of Christ's birth. He had not the same callow confidence now, but he must go on. Fearfully he kept close to the ruins adjoining the Grand' Place. Before him hundreds of figures were silhouetted against flames, some sitting down, others standing. Laughter, talking, the crash of an empty bottle, a few cheers. What were their officers doing? He could only hope that none were among them. By the excited shouts and bursts of singing, they were young soldiers, of the 1920 class of Sauer and Kraut, ready to welcome any thought away from that of death.

He went back whistling the Blonde from Eden as he approached a row of faces umbered against the black desolation of moonlight.

To Kidd and the Fusilier he said, taking them apart, “They're unarmed, so far as I can see. With Kraut as interpreter, we might take them prisoner. Make it clear that anybody who shoots without my order will be court-martial'd for it. The whole plan exists on the idea of maintaining the spirit of a damned good binge. Have you got your mouth-organ?”

“You bet your life I have!”

“Well, don't play until I tell you. Now, Kidd, go and tell the company commanders will you?”

After the conference Kidd said, “You're really mad, old boy, but I'm mad too, so count on me.”

“The main point is that those Jerries will be unarmed. D'you know
Over
the
waves
waltz?”

“Sure thing. We've got it on the old polyphone at home.”

“So have we! Play it when we get up to them.”

“Right you are, old boy.”

*

At 2 a.m., at a time when only an occasional shot was to be heard or flare seen, they set off, bare-headed, rifles slung over shoulders. Phillip and Kidd walked in front with the two mascot prisoners. When within forty yards of the crowd, Phillip halted his men. It was a moment of annihilation of the old, a moment of life and death in balance. As though in a sleep-walk he touched Kidd's shoulder. The weak notes of a cheap pre-war German mouth-organ, ‘dumped' under Free Trade and bought
in a Penny Bazaar at Dalston for a Christmas present for a wild street urchin, arose among the noises of the Square. Soon voice after voice was softly joining in the tune which had been heard in South German towns, Swabian villages, from the strings of violin and piano in wine-shops and hillside arbours trellised with vines on Bavarian hillsides, in beer-gardens shaded by linden trees in Berlin—a tune of boyhood's lost summers of the old world.

Leaning on the hoe-handle, he cried out, “Mein prächtige kerl! Ihre krieg 1st beenden!”

“Ja!” cried Kraut. “Waffenstillstand! Zugreifen sie bitte zu! Zusammenkommen! Auf Parade!”

They fell in, and led by the mouth-organ, passed through the Square, and on down the Amiens road. They saw no one as they came near the plashes of the Ancre, to enter white layers of mist which rose higher as they went on, until only their heads were showing like a string of corks bobbing upon a moonlit sea, whence came the tenuous music of a mouth-organ, accompanied by the chipping cries of water-fowl among the charred stumps of the poplars in the marshes. No challenge rang out, no shot was fired. And so through the German line.

Remained the British outposts.

“Play
A
long
long
trail
.”

The moon was now fearfully bright.

At last—“Who are you?”

“Gaultshires!”

“Give the password.”

“Shut your f——g mouth, or I'll shut it for you!” hissed Kidd in his fiercest Cockney.

“Pass friend!”

“Bairnsfather, old boy, pure Bairnsfather!”

*

Tinny and feeble, generated by the last thrust of the whiskey-water from a nearly empty bottle, a music-hall air arose from the column shuffling and dragging itself along the road to Millencourt. At last—a white cottage on the right of the road. “Fall out.” Movement disintegrated upon the earth. Its leader, gaunt and puffy-eyed, moved through a dream to ‘Spectre' West.

“Well done. Take a pew.”

“Thank you, sir. I'll see that my chaps are settled in, and come back, if I may.”

The Brigade First-class Warrant Officer reported one hundred and forty two prisoners.

“May they remain here tonight, sir? They're just about as done-in as my chaps.”

“We'll see to it.”

It was warm in the cottage, he sat on the floor, flames in the fireplace lapped painfully into him through his eyes, he was asleep.

*

Holding the pale buff Field Postcard, the visible answer to prayer, Hetty hastened next door to see Thomas Turney.

“Phillip is safe, Papa! He says he is well, and a letter follows!”

“Thank God.”

“Amen,” from Aunt Marian.

The old man was agitated by thoughts of his Will, and the urgent need, in the little time left, to make up for his ill-treatment of his son Charley; for Charley's son Tommy had been wounded in the battle, with the South African Brigade. Tommy had given the name and address of his grandfather as next-of-kin.

The
Daily
Telegraph
correspondent in that morning's paper declared that the South Africans had saved the flank of the Fifth Army by their stand at Combles, halfway across the 1916 battlefield. They had destroyed an entire German division before they were over-run, and had fought to the last man.

“I must send a cable to Charley, Hetty. Poor fellow, he will feel it keenly.”

He fingered the gold ring, set with a large white diamond, which held his neck-tie together. This cherished possession should go to Charley, with his house. That night he wrote and told his son this, in the letter following the cablegram to a P.O. Box number in Cape Town.

*

Two days before posting the printed card to his mother, Phillip wrote the last entries in the War Diary of No. 1 Composite Battalion.