Behind the Lines (24 page)

Rawley took the tattered book from his knees and hurled it across the dug-out. “Shut up,” he cried viciously. “Blast you!”

Alf took a cigarette from behind one ear and lighted it with the stump of the old one. Then he drew up his
knees and began again. “Did I ever tell you about that little French bit I picked up at Lillers? Coo, she wasn't 'arf a hot little bitch . . .”

Rawley put his feet to the floor and got up menacingly. “Will you or will you not shut that foul mouth of yours?” he shouted.

“Orl right, orl right,” grumbled Alf, and then added, when Rawley turned away, “I didn't know this was a flamin' Salvation Army!”

Rawley paced up and down the narrow dug-out, sucking fiercely at his pipe. “My God!” he complained. “Haven't I got enough to put up with without having to listen to your foul talk. Isn't it enough to have to endure your filthy habits? My God! Here I sit day after day in this damned pig-sty with a dirty little guttersnipe, who can talk about nothing except women and his belly.” He turned fiercely and shouted, although Alf had not spoken: “Stop it, I say! Stop it! I'll wring that filthy unwashed neck of yours if you open your mouth again.”

Alf assumed an expression of injured virtue and turned reproachful dark eyes on Rawley; but Rawley had turned away and now sat on his bunk with his head clasped in his hands. “I'm sick of this lousy hole,” he groaned, and all the fire had gone from his voice. “My God! I'm sick of it.”

Alf regarded him with hostility. “Oh, put a sock in it,” he cried. “Do you think I like this perishin' bug-'ouse any more than you do? But what's the use of chewing the rag?” He spat with disgust. “You fairly give me the
belly-ache, you do. Grouse, grouse, grouse!” He turned away and began to sing: “Grousin', grousin', grou-sin', always bloody well grousin', early in the morning from Reveille till Lights Out.” The song had restored his natural cheerfulness, and he broke off to say in sympathetic tones: “Now looke here, chum, what we want is a bit o' cheerin' up. A bit of a sing-song. That's the stuff to put a 'eart into the troops.” He scratched the back of his tousled head thoughtfully, and then his furrowed brow cleared. “ 'Ere! I'll tell yer what we'll do.” He smacked his thigh. “We'll go to the perishin' Pip Squeaks. Struth we will!” He fished his huge watch from an inner pocket and glanced at it. “They're over at Evigny, an' the hut's fifty yards from the 'ouses.” He jumped off his bunk enthusiastically. “Come on. We can git right up close an' hear the 'ole bloomin' show buckshee.”

Alf's enthusiasm had conveyed some shadow of interest to Rawley. He raised his head and said doubtfully, “Well, I suppose it can't be worse than staying here.”

“Course not,” said Alf. “Come on. 'An put a jerk in it, or we shall be laite for the orchiestra's openin' bars!”

Thus it came about that two dirty and dishevelled outcasts trudged several miles through the mud and ruin of the old battlefields to lie in a ditch beside an army recreation hut. But listening to the familiar choruses that swelled from within, they forgot that they were wet and muddy, they forgot the chill wind and the dreary desert around them, and they cursed when the rumble of a convoy of lorries drowned the voice of a singer.

“She'll tell you what you're ter do, dear, if you look in 'er eyes,” sang Alf softly. “That's a fav'rite o' mine—that an' ‘Thora.' Coo, I wish 'eed sing ‘Thora'—lovely thing!”

Those familiar airs, drifting plaintively through the night, were a torture to Rawley. They were an insistent reminder of happier days and of all that he had lost, but he deliberately went down into the depths of despair, and found a melancholy joy in contrasting his present plight with that last occasion on which he had listened to a concert party. He recalled every incident of that evening—the comic bicycle ride with Piddock, the meal at the officers' club, Berney sitting close beside him in the crowded hut and the exact expression of her eyes in the shade of her hat and the intonation of her voice as she had turned to him and asked why he was staring at her. And then that walk to the village in the moonlight beneath the trees and the wonderful moment in the lane beside her billet. He recalled every look, every inflexion of her voice, and took a morbid delight in the pain he was causing himself.

Alf enjoyed himself thoroughly and chuckled with delight at the obvious humour of the comic songs; but Rawley, sunk in his abyss of self-pity, was silent, and when the plaintive air of “Roses in Picardy” came from the hut he dug his hands in the mud and groaned.

The singing of “God save the King” roused them, and they crept from the ditch and stole away. Alf chattered light-heartedly as they plodded through the darkness, but
Rawley, with his eyes fixed on the flickering gunflashes on the horizon, answered not a word.

II

Alf brought news one day of a projected raid by Kelly. “All I know is that it's tomorrow,” he said. “They say it's on a canteen in a village, but they don't know really. Anyway, Kelly wants the whole issue tomorrow morning, so it's going to be a proper go. He ain't had the 'ole lot out for months. We'll take four of them sacks, and if we don't come back with a nice little lot of stuff it won't be my fault.”

Rawley had not seen this band of outlaws at close quarters before, and when a little before midday they assembled in the neighbourhood of the old Jaeger Redoubt, he eyed them with interest. There were about thirty of them all told, and although they had all been soldiers and most of them wore some article of military clothing or equipment, a casual glance would not have revealed that fact. Thick plasterings of dried mud covered them from head to foot, and it was only on looking closer that one perceived such incongruities as a stained and tattered tunic above a muddy pair of civilian trousers or an old corduroy peasant jacket above an almost unrecognizable pair of military riding breeches. All were dirty and unshaven, and there were beards varying from short, black wiry stubble to dirty tangled growths several inches in length. Two or three wore civilian greatcoats that had once been
black, and with the torn, mudstained skirts flapping about their legs and their untidy beards hanging down over the ravelled upturned collars they looked like outcasts from a ghetto. Some wore sandbags tied with string about their legs; others had made a hole for their heads in brown army blankets and fastened them round their waists with wire or rope. One man wore a coat of stained ground sheets laced together.

Hats were in keeping with other strange garments. There were two or three steel helmets, but torn and shapeless service caps, battered homburgs and greasy civilian caps predominated. There was also a battered straw, a bowler, and even a woman's bonnet. Several men carried rifles, and one or two had dirty web equipment buckled over civilian jackets and overcoats. And two men wore muddy field grey with faded red numbers on the shoulder-straps. These, Rawley learnt, were Germans who had been hiding in the devastated area with their former enemies ever since they had found themselves on the wrong side of the Line during one of the Somme battles of 1916.

The men stood about in groups of two or three, and what little conversation there was, was carried on in subdued tones. Each group kept to itself and displayed no desire for the companionship of another group. They eyed one another suspiciously and even hostilely. Evidently there was no camaraderie of common distress among this collection of outcasts. It was each man for himself.

When Kelly appeared at the head of his six intimates a hush came over the motley assembly. His appearance,
though strange enough, was in striking contrast to that of the collection of dirty, ragged tramps before him. He wore a pair of polished field-boots, a mackintosh, and a German officer's cap with a shiny black peak. A leather belt supporting a revolver holster was buckled outside the mackintosh, and a rifle hung by a web sling from one shoulder. Behind him his six companions were dressed in varying combinations of military and civilian clothing, but all were shaven and clean. And their clothing, though incongruous, was unstained and apparently comparatively new.

He stood for a moment like a general at the head of his staff eyeing the scarecrows before him with a contemptuous little smile, and then he turned on his heel without a word and strode off. The tattered outcasts trailed after him.

On the long march which followed, the little groups preserved the aloofness which they had already shown during the assembly at Jaeger Redoubt, and when from time to time the roughness of the country necessitated a convergence upon a track, they waited sullenly for their turn and followed one another at intervals. And they debouched once more into scattered groups as soon as the nature of the country permitted. And yet as it seemed by tacit agreement, some sort of march discipline was observed; for when nearing a main road the groups made use of the contours of the ground to approach unseen, and crossed it one by one when absence of traffic made it safe to do so.

Three hours of marching brought them to the edge of the true devastated area. Before them lay a country in which
woods, though damaged, were more than clusters of bare poles, and villages, though not free from the marks of war, were yet habitable. They halted in a wood while Kelly gave the final directions to his companions. The spot had been well chosen. Behind stretched the waste of the devastated area; before lay a village and cultivated fields. One narrow road meandered from the village over the bare downland beyond. Three or four miles away on a hill-top the spire of a church rose above a cluster of trees. Except for the near village and the distant church spire no habitation showed in all that sweep of country.

Kelly gave his instructions tersely. The only troops in the village were a small A.S.C. unit. His six intimates would deal with that. No telegraph wires ran through the village; the one military telephone cable would be cut. No traffic might be expected upon the road, but nothing must be allowed to pass out of the village or through it. They were to help themselves and get back as soon as possible. Finally they were to stay where they were until he gave the signal to advance.

Followed by his six companions he left the wood and strode down the hillside, but halted in a little hollow about halfway between the wood and the village. One of his companions went on alone. He was dressed in ordinary clean fatigue with a web belt. There was nothing in his appearance to arouse suspicion, and his mission was evidently to reconnoitre and to cut the telephone cable connecting the A.S.C. orderly-room with other units. He
reached the village and disappeared from view down a narrow lane between cottages.

The outcasts sat beneath the trees on the edge of the wood and waited. The pale wintry sun was already low on the horizon, and the slight mist gave promise of a frost to come. The smoke rose almost vertically from three or four chimneys in the unconscious village below, and hung in little hazy grey palls a few feet above the pots as though too lazy to rise farther. A woman was pegging washing on a line between two fruit trees in a cottage garden, and on the big stretch of brown plough that separated the wood from the village an old peasant was working, moving between the furrows with slow, angular movements. Kelly and his companions were invisible in their little hollow.

A quarter of an hour passed. The hornet hum of a flight of aeroplanes flying high passed overhead and died away. A little girl and two cows ambled down a track to the right. And then Kelly's scout reappeared. He emerged from one end of the village, left the narrow road and came striding across the plough towards the hollow. A little rustle of sound rippled on the edge of the wood as the outcasts stirred expectantly.

The scout had disappeared in the hollow, but he reappeared a few moments later with Kelly and the others. The group began to move towards the village, but Kelly who was the last to go, before he turned away, swung his hand underarm in the signal to advance.

The outcasts among the trees scrambled to their feet and streamed down across the plough towards the village. The old peasant straightened his bent back as they passed, and stood looking after them with his knotted old hands hanging awkwardly at his sides.

Kelly and his intimates reached the village fifty yards ahead of the others and disappeared from view. Rawley and Alf, side by side, were a little in front of the other outcasts, but Alf twitched Rawley's sleeve. “Step short,” he cried. “If there's any trouble let someone else get it first.” Each carried a long bread-sack over one shoulder, like a bandoleer, with the two ends tied together with string under the other arm. Alf carried his revolver in a pocket, but Rawley was unarmed except for an entrenching-tool handle.

Presently they found themselves in a narrow rutted lane between two cottages and an orchard. It was that down which the scout had first disappeared. It led them to the main, and indeed only, street of the village. Several of the outcasts were already there prowling along with rifles at the ready like bandits in a film drama. A woman carrying a bucket opened a cottage door as three of them were passing, and at the sight of them she screamed, dropped the bucket, and slammed the door. A few yards down the street a lorry was drawn up on the cobbles close to a house. The wooden notice-board hanging outside the door proclaimed it to be the A.S.C. unit's office. The half-dozen men inside had already been held up by Kelly's bodyguard, and were now herded together in a small back room. Two
of the outcasts had been pressed into service to guard them under the command of one of the bodyguard.

Outside the A.S.C. unit's little canteen a sorry-looking horse was being harnessed to a dilapidated spring-cart, and Kelly's companions were busily engaged in transferring the contents of the canteen to the cart. Doors and shutters had closed as by magic, but the outcasts set to work with rifle butts, crowbars, and any farm implements that came to hand to batter them open. Kelly, watchful and alert, strode up and down and urged them on. Many of the villagers fled through their back gardens and reached the open country, but the screams which rose now and then above the shouts, thunderous blows, splinter of wood and tinkle of broken glass proclaimed that some had been less wise.