Behind the Lines (3 page)

But he had enjoyed it all—the night journey through unknown country to the unknown of the battle line, the ride up to the battery at dusk, across that desert country, where heaps of rubble with a riven, up-jutting gable marked the site of a village and ragged poles, black against the evening sky, were woods that once had been green.

It had interested him. It was experience—life. It was all so different from the quiet East Anglian town in which he had been born and bred, and from which till now he had never been more than a hundred miles. Life was just an accumulation of experiences, he had decided in his youthful philosophy, and the wider and more varied the experiences, the fuller the life.

In that quiet provincial town he had welcomed the war as a new phenomenon—he had been too young to theorise about the Boer War—and the call for men and
his answering that call was the gateway to an experience, a great and wonderful man-making or man-breaking experience such as had never before crossed his horizon.

And so he was interested in France and avid of experience. He could still recall the thrill of that ride at dusk across the devastated area when suddenly the pearly sky above seemed to have been ripped like calico and the tiles of a derelict farmhouse nearby had lifted in the air before his eyes and bellied out into a red balloon-shaped cloud, whilst his ears had been smitten with a furious crack of sound. His first shell. And his first casualty too he could remember with an equal though different thrill.

It had been at night—one of those curiously quiet nights when the forward area seemed remote from the civilized world, like some distant uninhabited and unexplored country. He was walking from No. 2 gun-pit to the mess. The ragged wall of the ruined
estaminet
ahead showed fitfully against pale flickerings on the northern horizon—soundless flashes from distant guns. He was sucking contentedly at his pipe and contemplating the seven stars of the Great Bear, when suddenly out of the night came that whistle of a giant whip lash-crack and the flower-like bloom of orange light in the darkness near him. Then silence. And then again that vicious lash-crack. And then silence, broken by a long drawn “Oh-e-e-e-e” that made his scalp tingle.

He picked himself up from where he had flung himself prone and groped towards the sound. A dark form that moved once convulsively lay on the edge of the corduroy
road. He overcame a strong feeling of shrinking and went down on one knee beside it. He pressed the button of his torch. Immediately a pair of glassy eyes set in a dough-like face surmounted by tousled black hair seemed to leap at him in the sudden brilliance. One muddy khaki leg stuck out over the edge of the track; the other leg—was not there. All below the thigh was just a tangle of sopping rags. The torch flickered in his shaking hand and went out. He was violently sick.

And the first time he had fired a gun in anger, that too, he remembered. It was his third day with the battery. They were engaged in harassing fire. The familiar, “Ready! . . . Set” had been called, when he had been seized with a sudden desire to fire the gun himself. He squinted through the sight and changed places with the layer on the seat. The smooth polished firing lever was in his hand. ‘Fire!' He had pulled the lever and had immediately been blinded by the flash, and his ears had been stung by the report. The gun slid smoothly back and up again, and he heard his shell sizzling away on its flight towards the enemy.

That too had been an experience. He had fired his first round, one among millions it is true, but individually he had performed an act that may have caused death to some of the enemy. He had taken his place in the world war.

It was all intensely interesting. He felt that he was really living. It was all so different from the quiet humdrum life of a provincial insurance office, broken each year by a fortnight's holiday at Lowestoft where one wore carefully
chosen
négligé
and had mild flirtations with rather silly girls one picked up round the bandstand.

This was France. Everything proclaimed the fact. That farm wain with its high hurdle arrangement fore and aft and its two long-maned, long-tailed greys was quite different from the creaking tumbrils one met on the roads of Norfolk. And the plodding peasant with his long whip—his deep-throated “Heu!” was quite unlike the sing-song “Arld ye!” of East Anglia. And the
estaminet
they were passing and on which the men cast longing glances; it stood flush with the dusty white road; Café du Commerce was painted in large faded black letters across its flat yellow-washed front, and white blistered shutters were closed against the glare. A few self-important chickens patrolled the doorstep. It was all different, all so different from the “White Harts” and “Red Lions” of rural England.

“There we are,” cried Cane suddenly. “C Battery is over there.” He pointed towards the grey point of a low spire which rose above a clump of trees a kilometre on his left. “And this is our turning.” He swung his riding whip round towards a narrow winding road to the right which left the straight main road a hundred yards ahead.

A low brick building with an ornamental ironwork door stood on the corner where the road forked. Two army lorries were parked on the grass of the roadside, and a third lorry with the front part jacked up and the wheels off stood in a yard bounded by the outbuildings. A man in shirt sleeves carrying a bleached canvas bucket “eyes righted” as Cane and Rawley rode by.

“Some workshop, got a nice cushy billet!” commented Cane. And then he added, “Lead on,” and turned his mare to watch the battery turn off the main road.

The narrow road curved round the slope of a hill, thick dark woods above, lush grass and a tiny stream below. Round another curve Rawley rode, and then the village appeared. Yellow or whitewashed cottages bordered the road which now widened and divided to encircle the church, a short grey tower surmounted by a shorter peaked spire. Here they met a procession of first communicants, little girls in white frocks and long white veils, two by two, followed by little boys in black suits and large white bows, whose hands were clasped devotionally but whose eyes strayed to the dun column of horsemen and guns. Behind the church the broad and re-united road formed a little square shaded by two short rows of trees.

“Beneath the spreading chestnut tree B bloody battery stands!” murmured Lieutenant Piddock to Rawley as the battery wheeled and came to a halt beneath the branches.

II

Some hours later Rawley, who was orderly officer, walked back down the village street. The sun had set, but the long evening of the northern summer had not yet turned to night.

The battery had already made themselves at home. Three village girls, arm in arm, were talking to two gunners who straightened their caps and saluted as Rawley passed.
On the other side of the road a driver was helping a farm girl to carry a wooden pail up the railed steps to a cottage door. Beneath the trees behind the church the guns stood parked, and a sentry with fixed bayonet paced to and fro. Up a little lane on the left the reflection of the cook-house fire gleamed ruddily on a white cottage wall, and a slow north country voice was singing some sentimental song.

By the church he met Sergeant Jameson, a tall, well built man with a weather-beaten face and a pair of keen grey eyes shaded by the long peak of his cap. He transferred his riding switch from his right hand to his left armpit and saluted in the correct drill-book manner. Rawley said “Goodnight, sergeant,” and “Goodnight, sir,” came the sergeant's deep reply.

Rawley liked the way the man saluted him, looking him straight in the eyes. It was the masonic look which one competent and self-confident man gives another whom he considers competent also—the masonry of mutual respect which is independent of position and rank. A good man, Sergeant Jameson. He marched along with his shoulders square, his chest out, head up and chin in. It was not a swagger but the confident walk of justifiable self-confidence. Rawley admired the type. And there were several men of that type in the battery. A good battery; undoubtedly the best in the Brigade. And the Brigade of course was one of the best in France.

He passed up a narrow lane between two cottages, turned to the left under an archway, and passed by the bricked walk round the midden to the door of the mess.
It was a long, low white-washed house with a second floor lit by dormer windows in the high, tiled roof. The mess-room was long and low, brick-floored, and with two windows facing each other. The oil lamp hanging from the uncovered joists was lighted, though the evening sky was still bright behind the open windows. A mess servant was putting crockery on a table, and Piddock on hands and knees was unpacking the gramophone. The various odds and ends of mess property that had been packed with the gramophone lay in a semi-circle around him. He wound up the motor and put on a record. He nodded to Rawley and then, with hands thrust deep in the front pockets of his riding breeches, began a clog dance on the brick floor.

Whedbee, the battery second-in-command, sat in a canvas chair beneath the lamp reading a newspaper. He was a tall, lean, middle-aged man with thin hair. He bent his head and looked over his glasses short-sightedly with contracted brows as Rawley came in, and then went on reading. He wore the green and yellow territorial ribbon. In civil life he had been a mathematical master in a private school, and his habit, when talking, of emphasizing a point by removing his glasses and stabbing the air with them was more suggestive of the class-room than the wagon lines which he commanded.

Suddenly the glass-topped door that led to a room occupied by the family was opened, and a French girl appeared holding in her hand a fry pan. She called in a loud whisper to the mess servant, who was laying the table, and then quickly disappeared. Piddock stopped in his dance to
gaze at the now closed door, and then he turned to Rawley with raised eyebrows.

“And very nice, too!” he said, with emphasis.

Whedbee looked up short-sightedly from his paper. “Eh?”

“We were admiring the local fauna, sweetheart,” Piddock told him.

“Fauna!” murmured Whedbee absently. “What fauna?”

“Cows and sheep, my old war horse,” cried Piddock. “But especially birds.” He clapped Whedbee on the back. “Dear little dicky birds, my jolly old Napoleon. A charming little French one popped her pretty head in and popped out—bless her. What a sight for scarred veterans!” And he tripped across the room holding out the corner of his tunic like a skirt.

“Is that all?” murmured Whedbee, and went on reading.

Piddock turned with hands outstretched. “All!” he cried. He walked solemnly towards Whedbee and halted before him. “All! you cold-blooded pedagogue! Has Cupid's dart never penetrated your academic gown? Has luscious love never nestled among the recurring decimals in your heart?”

“Never,” answered Whedbee with mock sadness.

Piddock flung an arm across his eyes and gulped. “Teacher, you unman me. My heart is in the coffin there with Gertie, and I must pause till it come back to me.”

Whedbee took off his glasses and polished them on a corner of his handkerchief. “I say, old man,” he remarked amiably, “do you mind pausing somewhere else; you're right in my light.”

CHAPTER III

I

Breakfast on the following morning in the clean brick-floored mess-room, accompanied by the clucking of hens on the midden, and the pleasant whirring sound of a separator, was prolonged far beyond the time that meal had taken in the cramped earthy dug-out they had recently left. French-made coffee instead of chlorinated tea, and fresh butter and milk in place of the usual tinned substitutes, were luxuries too rare and precious to be spoiled by hasty consumption.

At last Major Cane pushed back his chair and carried his unfinished cup of coffee to the open window where the sunlight slanted through the apple trees. He placed it on the sill and unrolled his oilskin tobacco pouch.

“Must get some exercise,” he grunted between the puffs as he lighted his pipe. He threw away the match and leaned out of the window. “There is a good level bit of turf there. Where's that cricket ball? And Sergeant Johnson has a bat.” He paused with his coffee cup half way to his lips. “Rawley you're a bowler, aren't you? How about a knock!”

Rawley went to the window and inspected the pitch. “Pretty good,” he agreed. “But you said I could go into Doullens this morning, sir.”

“Oh yes, so I did. Here, Whedbee; what about a knock! You are a dark horse I believe.”

Whedbee, who was filling a large and very old curved pipe, looked over his glasses and walked solemnly to the window. “I'll bowl you first over,” he announced with the same solemn air.

“Good for you!” cried Cane. “Piddock, what about it?”

“Righto, sir. I'm game,” answered Piddock who, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, was winding up the gramophone.

Rawley strapped on his Sam Browne and put on his cap. “Well, I'll leave you to it,” he said.

In the narrow lane outside the house his groom was walking his mare, Lucy, up and down. She looked beautiful with the sunlight glistening on her glossy chestnut flanks, and woman-like she seemed to know it, for she arched her sleek neck coquettishly and lifted her white-stockinged forefeet daintily, every now and then breaking into a little springy trot. Rawley swung himself into the saddle, and with his crop resting on his thigh like a marshal's baton, rode at a walk down the steep track into the village street.

Once clear of the village he got on to the grass bordering the road and broke into a trot. At the fork roads he acknowledged the “eyes right” of an A.S.C. private carrying two green tins of petrol and crossed the main road to the pasture beyond. He had seen on the map that he could save a mile by cutting across country, and he was anxious for a gallop.

He topped a rise and saw below him a little combe with a spinney at the bottom. Down the slope he cantered, trotted round the margin of the spinney and
saw before him a long gentle rise. He clapped his knees to his mare's flanks and loosened the reins. She was fresh and needed no encouragement; she stretched her shapely neck and threw out her legs. Black clods spurted behind the flying hoofs. A hare got up and sped away like an arrow ahead. “Oh-e!” yelled Rawley light-heartedly, and, bent low like a jockey, went madly after. Near the crest it doubled almost under the horse's feet. Rawley thundered on up the slope and at the top straightened and pulled into a canter.