A Test to Destruction (22 page)

Phillip forced himself to treat Kidd's remarks in the manner of Jimmy O'Toole dealing with Moggers.

“Do tell me what is your idea, Bill.”

“I've told you! Bill Kidd's boys are here and here they stay!”

“But aren't they my boys too, Bill?”

“Oh, dry up!”

“They're Tabor's boys too, Bill. What is more, Tabs has asked me if he can have them back.”

“You give me the guts ache, old boy.”

“There's another thing, Bill. I sent you a message to return these Vickers guns last night.”

“They're more use where they are now. I've had this pillbox wired, a hundred yards away on three sides. Any Boche coming over will get it in the neck. Enfilade fire, old boy, pop-pop-pop, all the old ninepin stuff they gave us on the Somme, now about to be returned, with interest!”

“I have to tell you officially that the line is ordered to swing back. You are now five hundred yards east of the new line.”

“I've got deaf ears, old boy, like Nelson's grandmother. Have a spot of Haig and Haig, old boy, and stop nagging! You're worse than a bloody old woman. Your hand's shaking, what you been doing, wanking yourself in the Saschenfeste?”

“Perhaps you speak from experience?”

“I gave it up, old boy, when I lost my potato-water!”

“Oh, damn all this kid's talk, Bill. You've got to come back.”

“I won't!”

“But we need you for further entertainment. You're our
morale
raiser, now that the Alleyman is so persistent.”

“Boche, old boy, Boche! Alleyman went out with jam-tin bombs, Lee-Enfield long rifles, crypts of German churches at Sydenham filled with machine-guns, hard tennis courts made before the war to take 17-inch Krupps hows to bombard London from Guildford, Asquith having shares in Krupps, and all that milksop ‘Sapper's' stuff. No use for Alleyman, old boy! I'm a Boche eater.”

“This pill-box will be crumped to hell, you know.”

“Then we'll find better 'oles outside, old boy! It's no good naggin' at Bill Kidd, I told you. Bill Kidd's a Boche eater!”

“The horse steaks you brought up are good enough for me!”

“I got up the shackles, old boy, and if it had been left to you, we'd have had damn all! Now look, I'm fed up with all this yap! Bill Kidd's busy, so buzz off, like a good little man.” He glared at Phillip. “So you need me for further entertainment, do you? Who d'you think I am, Harry Tate? Right, old boy, here's some further entertainment! Let me tell you this! Bill Kidd was
born
in the county! He
belongs
to Gaultshire, see? I don't need to supply myself with a bogus address of so-called next of kin! You lie like a dead mule, my Mad Son! Now hop it, for Christ's sake. I've got a job on.” He sloshed whiskey into a mug, and drank.

“So have we all, Bill. I think you'd better come back. It's an order.”

“You can stuff it, old boy, where the monkey put the nuts! This is the only order I recognise!” He held up his cyclostyled copy of the Field-Marshal's
Special
Order
of
the
Day.

“Don't get sozzled, Bill.”

“Piss off!”

*

It was growing dark by 8 p.m., the time ordered for the withdrawal to the Peckham Switch. Phillip had seen both colonels of the flanking battalions; he had arranged with Tabor and Dawes the times of bringing in their company outposts, and filing back through the companies occupying the new trenches,
and so into support. All papers in the Saschenfeste had been burned, but the wires to Brigade were not yet cut. Signallers waited to do this, to carry away their D-3 converted boxes and power buzzers.

At 8.15 p.m. the Germans put down a barrage extending from the Menin road east of Ypres to the Canal, thence south along the Damstrasse to the Wytschaete-Wulverghem road. Obviously they had anticipated the intended withdrawal, but not the time. After the high explosive and shrapnel there was a pause. By this time the forward companies, except two platoons virtually held prisoner by Major Kidd, had withdrawn to the new line. Soon after 8.40 p.m. gas shells began to fall with soft down-spinning sighs into the low rubble undulations of Wytschaete. Phillip was then on his way back to the Saschenfeste. From the low ground to the south, across wastes of decayed life that was the battlefield there arose the most melancholy, the most desolate noise of the ruined nights of the war, the rising and falling howls of Strombos horns.

Wearing his respirator, he arrived sweating hot at the Saxon fort, and pushing aside the heavy gas-blanket, sat down on an ammunition box and pulled off the rubber mask. About him were men with greenish faces, for the only light within the shelter came from two dips of rifle-cleaning flannel in tins of whale oil, burning fitfully and casting shadows on the walls of cold sweating concrete. The air within was acrid with smoke of ration-box wood, for an attempt had been made to light the stove after a hock bottle on several joined pull-through cords had been hauled up and down the rusted chimney pipe. At least resinous smoke overlaid the smell of sweat and unwashed bodies.

Wooden frames had been made for chicken-wire beds; from somewhere O'Gorman had scrounged a round table-top, and fixed it to biscuit boxes.

“Let the Brigade-major know that the withdrawal is complete, and tell him that we have left an advanced strong-point in the Staenyzer Kabaret, with two Vickers and protecting parties in shell-holes with Lewis guns and rifle grenades on its flanks. If he wants to know why, I'll speak to him.”

“Very good, sir.” Then, “Brigadier on the wire, sir.”

Phillip told ‘Spectre' that Bill Kidd was repeating his stunt of going forward to the wire in front of the Bois de Gurlu, when he had caught the Germans in enfilade and broken up the attack
there. ‘Spectre' listened, then he said, “Come down and see me as soon as you are clear of the Saschenfeste.”

The new advanced headquarters of the battalion were to be behind Boegart Farm.

This conversation with ‘Spectre' had, of necessity, been overheard by the headquarters staff. As he put down the instrument, Phillip saw R.S.M. Adams look at Naylor, with a half-suppressed appeal. They know I'm going to be stellenbosched, he thought, before saying aloud, “I think I'll lie down for a spell.” Would they think that he was saying that, before going sick? He felt cold and thin. After a couple of minutes unrest upon a wire bunk he got up, and taking the hoe-handle, which was by now a mental protection against disaster, he said, “You know what to do, Naylor? Destroy everything here before going down to Boegart Farm. Report to Brigade as soon as you arrive, and confirm telephonic communication with the companies. And don't forget the flanking battalions.”

“Very good, sir? We'll see you at Boegart, later?”

“Oh yes, indeed! I shall be back within the hour.” R.S.M. Adams looked as though he wanted to say something, but again resisted the impulse. Phillip went out, with O'Gorman.

All wires having been cut and then dragged about, and the telephone removed by the signallers, a couple of Mills grenades were thrown into the opening of the Saschenfeste, to set off loose phosphorus bombs left lying on the floor and so to explode what ammunition boxes had not been carried away.

It was then that the R.S.M. spoke. “Sir,” he said to Mr. Naylor, “there are times when silence is not golden. Permission to speak, sir.”

“Yes, Mr. Adams?”

“Sir, I don't like seeing anyone so good-natured as the Colonel being put upon, sir. With your permission, sir, I'll go up now and bring back the men in front of the Kabaret outpost to the Peckham Switch. That's the Colonel's orders, sir, direct from the Brigadier, sir.”

“Yes, Mr. Adams, I agree.”

“I'll go at the double, sir.”

*

Phillip heard the muffled explosions in the Saschenfeste as he hurried down the Vierstraat road. Byron Farm was now Brigade advanced H.Q. ‘Spectre' came out of the sand-bagged shelter
when the sentry announced the visitor. ‘Spectre' and Phillip were standing in the open when salvoes of gas-shells began to flop down. “We'd better get inside, Phillip——” the Brigadier was saying when there was a loud swoosh, followed by a snapping noise as a yellow-cross canister struck ‘Spectre' on one of his legs and its contents splashed over the face of Phillip with what seemed to him to be an enveloping rush of crimson.

*

Unknown to himself, Major Kidd was alone in Kidd's Castle as he smoked gaspers furiously by the light of a solitary candle. His mouth was feeling, as he told himself in the current phrase, like the bottom of a parrot's cage. He was reading a cyclostyled foolscap sheet.

“Stale news, old boy,” he said to an imaginary audience of Bill Kidd's face imposed on that of Sir Douglas Haig. He spat out a wet fag-end, caught it expertly, and lit another from it.

“Throwing the ball towards a goal is neither cricket nor football. Won't do, old boy. Must put that straight for the lads.” He poured out more whiskey, and after rumination upon nothing added another stub to the pile cremating itself beside the candle.

“No good, old boy. If words fail you, then get someone to do the job properly. Bill Kidd, forward please! Yours in humble duty, Sah!” as in imagination he saluted the Field Marshal about to pin a Victoria Cross, with bar, upon Bill Kidd's tunic.

“We've heard that one before, old boy, about the Froggies!”

“That's the stuff to give 'em!” The glass bottle-neck of Haig & Haig rattled yet once again on the rim of the tooth-mug.

“Not quite right, old boy. Permit Bill Kidd to show you.”

After an hour or so, the following was written in Major Kidd's Field Message book.

He had finished reading it through, when he was interrupted.

Intent on his work, he had not noticed that it had become comparatively quiet behind the double gas-blanket.

The candle had burnt low beside the bottle.

Major Kidd was lighting another gasper, before hooking on a bag of Mills bombs, a knobkerry, a couple of daggers, and a revolver to his person when he heard footfalls coming down the steps of the dug-out. Thinking of his runners, he yelled, “Come on you Boche-eating crab-wallahs, do an allez!”

The blanket-curtain was pushed back at one corner. The barrel of a Parabellum pistol was pushed through. Other footfalls were audible.

“Hop it, my Mad Son!” said Kidd. “This is no time for fart-assing about! And don't play any more dam'-fool games, or you're liable to get hurt!” Then Major Kidd saw that the sleeve behind the pistol was
feld-gr
au
.

“Your ‘Boche-eating crab wallahs' have already gone down the ‘Allee',” said a precise voice in English. “What you call ‘communication trench'. Put up your hands, Herr Marmaladeating Englander!”

“Well, blow me down,” said Kidd. “Back with the old kamarads! Have a spot of old man Haig, Herr Deutschlander-fodder?” as he pointed to the bottle.

The German
hauptmann
took up what Kidd had been writing. He read it, smiled and said, “‘Hurraparadismus', I observe. What your comic papers call ‘swank', I fancy?”

“That's right, Herr Kanonenfleish. How about that spot? Better have it now, Bill Kidd's boys will be coming back, and don't you forget it!”