Behind the Lines (39 page)

Morning wore on to afternoon, and bullets began to whisper down the valley from the north. It was a situation which they had learned to expect. The enemy had found another gap and were trickling through it round the flank. Soon the position would be untenable: the haggard infantry would come trudging back, and the grey tide would lap westward again.

The guns were manhandled round and fired up the valley at the threatened flank. But the whip and crack of bullets overhead increased in volume; a machine-gun began its bedlam chatter; and the exhausted infantry began to stagger back.

Piddock ordered up the teams. They came at the gallop, but that machine-gun, traversing like a scythe above the grass, brought them down as they circled by the guns. Piddock, at the head of a little band of helpers, cut four unharmed beasts free from the kicking, struggling mass, and hooked them to a limber, while Rawley's gun-crew planted shell after shell in the neighbourhood of that damnable machine-gun. Ready hands swung the trail to the limber and the gun went off at a mad gallop.

A fresh team started for Rawley's gun, but never reached it. Men and horses came down in a kicking, struggling heap. It was evident that the gun could not be got away, and Piddock sent word to Rawley and his crew, firing and crouching in the shelter of the gun-shield, to abandon it and retire.

Shrapnel pursued the one retiring gun as it crossed the high ground. Conway was hit in the neck and slid from the saddle, but they put him across the crupper of Piddock's mare and rode on. A mile and a half back they unlimbered and came again into action. Infantry in artillery formation were moving up across the fields behind them—fresh troops at last. “And about bloody well time!” growled a haggard gunner, as he watched them move by.

Piddock's orderly rode in leading a couple of horses. “Where's Mr. Kemp? Did he get away all right?” demanded Piddock.

“I delivered your message, sir,” replied the man; “and Mr. Kemp said he would just fire a few parting rounds at the machine-gun; but I have an idea, sir, that—”

“That what?”

“That he intended to stay, sir. He sent the remainder of the section back with me, except three men with him, serving the gun.”

“But he may have come away after you left.”

“I don't think they could have got away, sir. We found it pretty warm when we came. Jerry was just working over the crest. There weren't any troops in front of us. And just as we dropped into dead ground by that old
water-tank, I had a look back, and the gun was still firing, sir, searching for that machine-gun.”

A fresh battery unlimbered on the ridge near Piddock's solitary gun, and came into action. The afternoon wore on to evening, and evening to night, and every hour the voices of fresh guns joined the roaring chorus on the ridge. Gradually an indefinable feeling of mastery crept over them; they felt in their bones that this time no infiltration of the enemy to a flank would render retirement inevitable. The great attack in the West had been brought to a halt.

In the fast failing light Piddock surveyed his little remnant of haggard scarecrows. “One gun we've brought through,” he said musingly to Nisbett, “one gun, two officers and a round score other ranks. Poor old Conway gone today—and Kemp. And one gun. But Jerry hasn't got it anyway. He's still on the slope above that last position they tell me; he never got down to the gun itself, though I expect it's chiefly scrap iron now. Anyway, as soon as it's dark enough I'm going to take out a couple of fellows to see if there is anyone left.”

III

After dark Piddock and two volunteers passed out through the line of shallow rifle-pits down to that S-shaped depression that had now become no-man's-land. The rising roar of gunfire of the past few hours had dwindled with the coming of darkness, and only an occasional round lashed through the night and burst with a gong-like crash.
Here and there a rifle cracked sharply, and a round went whimpering down the valley like a lost soul. Eastwards from the German slope an occasional Verey light soared up and shed its ghostly blue-green glare above the ground. Then they crouched motionless till it sank and expired.

They passed the dim shape of one of their limbers, tilted sideways on one wheel, and the dark heap of the slain team beyond. Then, quite suddenly, Piddock saw the gun. A Verey light soared up and as it sank slowly he saw the grotesque elongated shadow of the twisted shield, barrel, and broken wheel-spokes glide across the grass. “There it is,” he said, as they went forward again.

A voice from the ground to his left answered his. “Is that the captain? This way, sir. It's Gunner Higgins.”

Piddock knelt down beside the dark form. “Got it badly, Higgins?”

“No, sir. I'm all right. One of them damned typewriter ones in my leg; that's all. But poor old Baker and Jones have gone. Jones went about an hour ago. I told him to try and stick it. I said I knew you'd come out after us as soon as it got dark.”

“And Mr. Kemp? He gone, too?”

“He's over there by the gun, sir. I tried to drag him away from it because Jerry's got a machine-gun trained on it—thinking we might try to get it away, I s'pose—but his leg's all smashed up and he couldn't stand it. But I heard him groaning a short time ago.”

They found Rawley a yard or two from the battered gun. He was unconscious, but when they lifted him to
the stretcher the pain of the movement revived him for a moment, and he seemed to recognize Piddock's voice. The two men lifted the stretcher; Piddock slung Gunner Higgins across his shoulder by the fireman's lift; and the little party turned its back upon the soaring German lights and made its way towards the British lines.

IV

A long green and white train was running slowly down the line between Amiens and Boulogne. Prominently upon the white woodwork of each coach was painted the red cross of the Geneva Convention. Inside were long tiers of wire bunks that folded flat against the white walls when not in use; but at the moment they were all in use. Each was furnished with sheets and blankets, and on each white pillow lay a head, though some were hidden in swathes of bandages.

Rawley lay on the top tier of bunks with a cradle over his shattered leg to raise the blankets. Ahead of him lay long weeks in hospital and inevitable arrest. He felt weak and broken. Through the partly-open window he could see a level stretch of marshland bounded by dark, pine-covered dunes with here and there patches of dazzling white sand.

A sister came down the alley between the bunks and paused beside him. “I have a letter for you,” she said kindly. “It's marked private and confidential. Do you think you could manage to read it yet?”

He nodded and murmured weakly, “Yes.”

His fingers, answering sluggishly and like strangers to the commands of his brain, fumbled as they tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter. It was from Piddock.

“Well, old son, you are off to Blighty, and here am I still in beau-ti-ful France! But things are looking up. Comic Cuts says that the old Bosche has been brought to a standstill all the way down the line. Anyway, on our particular bit he is still sitting on the slope overlooking our poor old gun, and our fellows are sitting opposite and giving him a good plastering. We came out of it with one gun, one officer—myself—and twenty-two other ranks. Poor old Conway—a stout fellow, if ever there was one—was wounded coming back and died that night; and Nisbett stopped one a bit later and has gone down the line. So they pulled us out of it, and here we are in the most peaceful little burg you ever saw, waiting for new guns, officers and men. It is quite close to your C.C.S. and I hoped to come in and have many a crack with you. But they told me today that they were sending you to Blighty tomorrow, and that's why I'm writing this letter.

“I have fixed it all up for you, old son, so don't you be a B.F. and go and spoil it all! You just sit tight and obey orders—damn you! After we brought you in that night I had a brain-wave. Poor old Conway was lying there, too, and it occurred to me to swop your identity discs. There won't be any complications because, as I told you, he hasn't a relation in the world—and no money either, but you won't mind that. If I get cashiered
for making false returns, and come down to playing a tin whistle outside your billet, I know you'll spare me a penny. Anyway, on my casualty return I have sent in Conway as Kemp, and you as Conway.

“A nice little sister at your C.C.S.—by the by, I think I shall have to visit that C.C.S. again, even though you aren't there!—a sister at your C.C.S. told me that officers could usually choose which hospital in England they wanted to go to, provided it wasn't full; and I told her to have you sent to the Royal Berks at Reading. And, furthermore, I have written to Miss Berney Travers to say that a Lieutenant Conway will shortly be arriving at her hospital, and will she go and see him. Also, she is not to be surprised if she finds that this aforesaid Conway cove bears a remarkable resemblance to a certain Peter Rawley she once knew. So that's that.

“Well, old son, give my love to Blighty and all the pretty girls—including Miss Berney. God bless you, my children! May you grow in wisdom and wealth, and may your offspring be as the sands of the seashore for multitude; and when your Uncle Piddock comes to see you, may you greet him with a bottle of the best in either hand.

“Cheerio,

“Yours ever,

“C
HARLES PIDDOCK
.'

Rawley turned his head away to the window. He felt very weak and emotional. Through the narrow open slit
the twin lighthouses of Paris-Plage were coming into view, and beyond them, in the shining offing, a lean grey destroyer was slipping through the white-flecked water with a vapoury smudge above each funnel.

The sister came back down the alley-way and paused as her glance fell upon his face. She followed the direction of his eyes and nodded understandingly. “You will be in England tonight,” she said softly. And then she bent swiftly and flicked away the tear that had welled on to his cheek.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

W. F. Morris was an English novelist best known for Bretherton. Morris served with the 13th Cycle Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment during World War I, reaching the rank of Major at twenty-seven, and was awarded the Military Cross. He wrote ten novels.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1930 by W. F. Morris

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