How Dear Is Life (36 page)

“There'll be some souvenir watches and automatic pistols goin' tonight, Phil! Cor, talk about robbin' the dead, some of these 'ere blokes'd cut their muvvers' froats fer a tanner.”

This information having been given, Cranmer hummed out
The
Old
Battalion
once more on his jew's-harp.

Afterwards, they explored part of the wood. Cranmer showed Phillip where he had a coke-bucket hidden, with a sandbag of ‘black eggs', or coal
boulets,
‘won' from a Keep Off Slaveys' Bellies, who had half-inched it from a Froggie's cottage. What was a Keep Off Slaveys' Belly? asked Phillip, to be told that it was a K.O.S.B., otherwise King's Own Scottish Borderer. “The name was give 'm in Dublin, you know what the Jocks is, quick as greased lightnin', wiv them kilts,” grinned Cranmer. Then, “It's me lucky ole bucket, it's me mascot like, I wouldn't lose it for somethink.”

The black compressed eggs of coal-dust were extremely valuable; for a fire of sticks, showing flame, was not allowed in the trench at night. You could burn biscuits in the little old bucket, though they made a bit of a niff until they was charred, said Cranmer, then they turned red if you fanned 'em. A fire was a necessity, explained Cranmer, to ward off rheumatics. Rheumatics never yet got a bloke his ticket: no use working rheumatics. A coke bucket give a bloke a hot cup o' char when he come off sentry at night, a bit of all-right.

“You take it, Phil, I ain't got no kilt, you take it. Go on!”

“But how d'you know you won't need it, Horace? It's your bucket.”

“That's why I'd like you to 'ave it, Phil, straight I would. We might go away anytime. It's a present,” said Cranmer, in his hoarse voice.

“Well, let's leave it here, Horace.”

“All right, but it's yours when you want it, Phil.”

“Well, thanks very much.”

Having drunk their tea, they said goodbye. Phillip went back to the trench, having marked where the fire-bucket was concealed. It was an ordinary pail, perforated by bayonet-stabs.

On his return, he was told off for filling sandbags for a Trained Soldier to build up the broken parapets. The Trained Soldier did it with almost mathematical neatness, explaining that it was done first with a header, then with a stretcher, to tie the bags in, like bricks.

A sniper was active in that part of the trench. Phillip heard a Grenadier sergeant say that any guardsman hit in the head
would, after recovery in hospital, be court-martialled for unsoldierly conduct in the face of the enemy. One of the Bill Browns, not a Trained Soldier, along a length of trench a couple of yards or so inside the wood was hit through the head, while sitting across a pole and winding barbed-wire on a stick; his pals swore revenge. He died; but that was not enough to wipe out the stain. They swore to go out after dark and get the sniper, who was thought to be lying out in front behind some stiffies this side of the wire. Someone had seen the flash. They would bring him in, and after interrogation before the officer, they would take him into the wood and brain him with entrenching tool handles.

Phillip was surprised, and a little abashed, by the dark bitter anger in the pre-war soldiers: the dark compression of peace-time urban destitution, the low mind-strata of starvation in slums, when the taunt of
soldier
was an insult on a level with street-walkers. But the abashment was momentary; the warm and comradely strength, and the security it gave to be among the regulars, was what kept him going.

Three of the Bill Browns went out that night, after the whispered word was passed round, “No firing—listening patrol out.” They did not get the sniper; but they did get several sandbags of loot, including watches, small black automatic pistols, Iron Grosses, cigar cases, money, brandy flasks, and about a dozen gold rings, cut off the fingers of the dead. Phillip tried to buy a pistol, offering five francs and a ten-shilling note, all the money he had on him; but the guardsman, wrapping the automatic in his red bandana handkerchief, said he would not sell under fifty francs.

*

There were still hares in the wood; and the grating
koch-karr,
followed by wing-flutters, of crowing cock pheasants sometimes answered the whistle and crack of a shrapnel shell. Cranmer stalked a cock, and shot it, early one morning; the problem was, how to cook it? Phillip suggested spitting it on a green stick, and turning it over a fire; Cranmer did this, for a surprise, while Phillip was ‘up' at sentry; and when Phillip went into the wood, along the little track to the place where the fire-bucket was hidden, there was Cranmer regarding a blackened object, with burned head and claws, tied with wire to a stick.

“Why didn't you pluck it first, Horace?”

“Cor, I knew there was suthin' I forgot, Phil!”

However, it was voted a very good meal by Phillip, to Cranmer's anxious satisfaction.

“Blime, like th' ole Blood'ound days, when we roasted a 'edge'og, 'n it went pop in th' middle, remember, Phil?”

*

Phillip's wish to be lousy was fulfilled. He wore, as part of active-service equipment of the British infantryman, a cholera or body belt. This was a closely knitted woollen band enclosing kidneys and belly, about three inches wide. It was supposed to protect against chill; but in practice it became a trap for the small grey parasites, their centres blood-pointed after feeding and black-pointed during relaxation.

After scratching for two days, he burned the cholera belt on Cranmer's coke-bucket at night, causing various remarks to be made down the trench where the smoke drifted.

The guardsmen exterminated lice in the crutches of their trousers, and the tails of their grey shirts, by an interesting method. A man sat on the trench floor, trousers down for inspection around the crutch; and when he spotted an itchy-koo, he touched one end of a thin yellow stalk of cordite, got by opening a cartridge, on the burning tobacco of his pipe, and charred the louse with the fizzing end.

Phillip opened a German cartridge: it was full of black glittering grains. He opened an English round, and burned one of the thin sticks, like doll's-house macaroni, watching it fizzing with a small dull yellow flame. He learned, too, that one of the ways to work your ticket was to chew cordite. It gave you symptoms of heart disease, making the beats irregular, and a temperature. But it did not pay to go sick in war-time; all a bloke got was a No.9 pill, and duty. Another way was to eat soap, to give you dysentery; but this could be detected in hospital, if they wiped your forehead with a hot flannel, when a lather came. Then you would get
a court-martial, and jankers—up to twenty s year if you didn't get the death penalty for cowardice in face of the enemy.

“Twenty years' hard labour? My God!”

“Yus, and you stops in the line when your company goes in support, and gits Field Punishment No. 1 when the company is in billets. Then, after the war, you serves the rest o' your time in the Glass House.”

“What's the Glass House?”

“Jankers, the so'jer's prison.”

“And what is Field Punishment No. 1?”

“You parades in full marching order wiv defaulters every hour, buttons clean, boots polished sole an' all, khaki blanco on equipment. Then for two hours a day they tie you to a transport waggon wheel by your wrists, yer toes just off'r ground, a'rter which back to the old spud-'ole, and all sanitary fatigues, as well as defaulters.”

“What's a spud-hole?”

“Guard room.”

“Good lord! How long do you get Field Punishment for?”

“Thirty days, per'aps.”

“Good God! What a way to serve a Mons hero!”

Phillip was shocked. How different everything was from what people at home thought it was!

“That's nuffink,” said Cranmer. “There wor a bloke on the Aisne what fell out wi' blisters and tiredness, in another lot, not our'n, and the Froggies cotched 'im and 'anded 'im over to our lot, and they give 'im a court-martial and shot 'im next mornin', and what's more I know where they buried 'im, in a orchard what the Alleymans cut the trees round like, you know, they cut the bark and the trees die, for the sap of a tree is its blood, like.”

“What did the Alleyman want to hurt the trees for?”

“Devilment, so's the ole ooman what lived in the 'ouse wouldn't 'ave no more apples. They're proper sods, the Alleymans, they shoot at kids and ole people, as you might shoot a dog.”

“I wouldn't shoot a dog, would you?”

“Not bleedin' likely, but in a manner o' speaking, like a dog is treated sometimes, suthin' cruel, see?”

“Yes, I know what you mean, Horace. The world's a funny place, in my opinion. For instance, there was a chap in the old ‘H' Company, of our lot, who reported sick, with pains in his guts, and was given a No. 9 pill, and sent back to duty. He was carried to hospital the next night; and died of peritonitis the next day, in the Field Hospital at Dickebusch, from a burst appendix.”

“Go hon!” said Cranmer, awed by the educated words.
Then, to change an awkward subject, “R bart a lit'l' old toon, Phil? I'll say the words fust-like.” Whereupon Cranmer crooned,

“Jolly good, Horace,” said Phillip, when the little concert was over. He thought he would buy a jew's-harp when he had the chance.

*

When the Grenadiers handed over, to go where fighting was severe, north of the Menin Road, the London Highlanders held their line of trenches with one man about every six yards.

By night and by day working parties, fatigues, digging, carrying, revetting. There was no time, no energy, for letter-writing. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Shells fell in the trench; digging was continuous. Snipers out in front. Even a spade-end copped it.
Crack!
dirt-spirt, ringing ear-drums, ragged iron hole. But the worst sniping came from a fixed rifle enfilading the communication trench.
Crack
!
and a man was lying on his back, mouth open, snoring, piteous rough hair, bright red blood trilling, trilling, trilling.

By now he was indifferent to lack of latrine. The custom was to use empty Maconochie tins and chuck them over the parapet, present for the Alleyman.

Every night, and again before each dawn, there were attacks to right and left of the canal, judging by the roar and racket of small-arms fire.

One morning the Germans came over on the left of the Highlanders' front, in broad daylight. There they were, crossing a space in the plantations where tobacco had been grown. Rows of tarred wooden shelters stood there, long brown tobacco leaves hanging inside. And there the attack stopped. Survivors tried to hide, until shrapnel smashed the wooden shelters and they ran out, and were bowled over like rabbits.

“If the Germans planned this war, they did it damned inefficiently,” said Slade, the red-faced, imperturbable bank-clerk.

Phillip was puzzled by the way the Germans attacked, always bunched up together, shouting—some said, singing—presenting targets that nobody could miss. None ever came as far as the new barbed-wire fence, two hundred yards away.

This fence was hung with empty bully-beef tins to give warning of wire-clipping at night. Then it seemed that the Germans were firing at the strands, to cut them. Or was it at the empty tins strung along the wire?
Ping
—they sent a tin dancing, again and again.

“They're nearly all seventeen-year-old volunteers over there,” Phillip heard Captain Ogilby say. “Their best troops may have been transferred to the Russian front.”

The rumour went round that the Germans were given ether to drink before an attack; then that they had bombs in their pockets, to blow up their captors if they were captured. Certainly, now and again, a dead German lying out in front gave out a little puff of smoke when the body was hit by a bullet. Later, it was said that they had come over with jam-pot grenades; and it was these that were detonated by the bullets.

Someone had a newspaper. There were photographs of the Grand Duke Nicholas, Russian Commander-in-Chief, whose armies were well into East Prussia. Perhaps after all there would be peace by Christmas. Phillip held to the hope, as did all the soldiery of the line, in the dead weight and dark inertia of the night.

O, when would peace come?

“T
HE
G
ERMANS
,” said the Prime Minister that night, in his peroration at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, “the Germans have retired baulked and frustrated by the immovable steadfastness and valour of the Allies!”

Cheers of the assembled guests beat down in waves from the rafters. The flags of the Allies moved with the heated air arising with perspiration. The French and Russian Ambassadors beat
their hands on the cloth of the high table, causing extra bubbles to rise in champagne glasses standing on slim stems on either side of the big silver-gilt Loving Cup.

“But that is not enough!” cried the Mr. Asquith with controlled emphasis. “We shall never sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly drawn, until Belgium recovers in full measure all, and more than all, that she has sacrificed——”

Cheers swept up again; and Thomas Turney looked to the gallery where the wooden effigies of Gog and Magog seemed to stare down upon the assembly of uniforms in many styles and colours, on the ladies with their scintillating jewelry.

“—until France is adequately secured against the menace of aggression——”

The French Ambassador bowed his head, as once again massed cheering, odorous of turtle soup—the only course served hot at the banquet—roast beef carved from barons in temporary pulpits at each side of the Hall, mince-pies, ice-cream, and vintage champagne—interrupted the speaker.

“—until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed!”

Thomas Turney, sitting with an acquaintance of the shelter on the Hill, patted the table with one hand and pulled down the black waistcoat of his evening suit with the other. He had come, not as the invited Chairman of Mallard, Carter & Turney, Ltd., Printers & Wholesale Stationers of Sparhawk Street, High Holborn, as once before in the reign of Edward VII, but on a spare Press ticket. He found the place extremely hot, the applause raucous, as he thought of his friend Bolton. He had drunk modestly of the wine, having regard for his digestion.

“That is a great task worthy of a great nation! It needs for its accomplishment that every man among us, old or young, rich or poor, busy or leisurely, learned or simple, should give what he has and do what he can.”

Amidst a furore of applause the Right Honourable H. H. Asquith sat down.

Ah, for the pen of a Pepys, thought Thomas Turney, to do justice to the scene. Then, what a pity Hetty was not there with him to see it. He could have arranged an invitation for the two of them. Of all the historic scenes the Guildhall had seen, none could have been more important to European
civilisation than the one he was witnessing. The thing that had moved him about Asquith’s speech was the news of the great battle for Ypres—the Germans “retiring baulked and frustrated”, his very words. They would bring comfort to Hetty and Dorrie.

“What is the uniform Asquith is wearing, can ye tell me? He looks like an Admiral, don’t he?” he asked his neighbour and companion, of
The
Morning
Post,
seeing that he had finished his short-hand notes. “What, are you writing in German?”

“Oh no, it’s an old system I learned long ago—Taylors. The P.M. is wearing the uniform of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House. Well, if you will excuse me, I must go to catch the late country edition. Wonderful sight, isn’t it? The ladies’ jewels alone would pay for the Expeditionary Force in France for a week! As for the City plate, shining so magnificently behind the chair of my Lord Mayor, what wouldn’t Asquith’s opposite number Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg give to get his hands on it! Well, I’ll be calling for you in about three-quarters of an hour’s time: but if by any chance I am delayed, you will find me at the
Post.
Are you sure that you won’t be too tired, in the meanwhile?”

“Never felt better!” replied Thomas Turney. It was his second visit to the City that day. He had come up with Hetty that morning, to see the Lord Mayor’s Show, mainly a khaki parade, giving Londoners their first sight of Dominion troops, strapping young fellows from Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand.

But what had remained in his mind was the sight of kerbside hawkers offering German Iron Crosses for sale—“Kaiser Bill’s Iron Crosses—anyone can wear ’em—or stamp on ’em if he likes!”

They had come up by tram, on the twopenny midday ticket. Thomas Turney’s second visit, however, had been by taxicab: as homewards he and his journalist acquaintance of the Hill were going that night.

The City streets at eleven o’clock were dark, shadowy, chill, after the brilliant scene within the Guildhall. Most of the street-lamps were out. Those alight were masked by dark blue paint, so that a small square of light shone down upon pavement and gutter. No clocks struck behind unlighted dials. Big Ben of Westminster Palace was silent for the duration. A romantic scene, he remarked, as the cab’s steel-studded rear tyres made
their regular scoring sound against the wooden blocks of the Embankment; a scene worthy of a Whistler with the mind of Rembrandt. Then the starry sky was pierced by thin sword-like beams of searchlights, reflected upon the tide of London river below the bridge.