Love and the Loveless (15 page)

About this time he began to wonder if it was poverty and suffering which brought out character, and made fine men. There was Daddy M’Kinnell, as the drivers called him. Upright, faithful, dutiful, polite but never obsequious: a man nearer fifty than forty, who had once done him the honour of showing him a photograph of himself and family—in two rows; himself and “Mother” almost deadly serious; the three boys grinning, wearing their Sunday best suits with celluloid collars and elastic bow ties, their heads close-cropped against nits. The boys having grown up, Daddy M’Kinnell had joined the Army.

*

At the beginning of March heavy howitzers were being pulled along Railway Road by tractors. On the 10th there was a dawn bombardment; towards noon prisoners came back, hatless and helmetless, in loose grey uniforms and knee boots, shorn heads, some with beards and spectacles, shuffling along covered with mud, looking (except for beards, spectacles, and cropped heads) like the unemployed he remembered at home, about 1906.

Rations and ammunition that night were taken up by twelve pack mules, to a mile beyond Baillescourt farm, where stood the remains of a village of shattered walls and rubble heaps which already had its own mysterious life underground in cellars,
judging
by the candle rays which twinkled at road level, and the tinkle of a gramophone heard as they halted awhile amidst other strings
of pack animals waiting anxiously lest shells fall upon the
congestion
. At last they could move on, and following the guide, turned left-handed to Beauregard Dovecote, an abandoned strong point on the edge of rising ground, as he saw from the occasional gun-flashes on low clouds. A guide led them past a fork in the lane, when gas shells began to pass over with soft noises of
whooe-er
whoo-er,
pop
pop,
to fall into what the guide said was the Brickfield. They sounded like phosgene, which had a delayed action on the heart. Should he order box-respirators, hanging at the alert across greatcoat chests, to be put on? Seeing was already difficult; there were no Very lights. He wished he had not brought Prince, whom he was leading, when 4.2s began to spout smoky-red fans two hundred yards across the Brickfield. Where was the ration party meeting them? The guide then said he thought he had lost the way. Rifle bullets cracked past. Phillip put the pack animals under Nolan and telling him to wait there went on with the guide to find the front line. They came suddenly upon a post. “Who are yer?”

“Ration party.”

It was one of the company guns. They had overshot the dump by a quarter of a mile, where Beauregard Alley began at the northern horn of Miraumont. He apologised to Teddy Pinnegar, who said, “That’s all very well, but where the hell have you been all the time?”

The shelling began again. He thrust himself forward into it, with a sort of sneer. Who cared? The men followed. The shelling stopped. At 1 a.m. they were back, without loss, at the picket line, three miles down Railway Road. Entering Tank Hotel, as the men called it, he found that his shirt and tunic were soaked with sweat. His servant had kept the stove going, and the heat, together with hot tea containing rum, soon hung down the old eye-lids.

Three days later the Germans had abandoned their second position on rising ground covering Loupart Wood to
Achiet-le-Petit
. A further bombardment lit the dawn. More prisoners shuffled back, as the transport moved forward in daylight through Miraumont while bearded, turban’d, dark-skinned cavalrymen passed them, pennons on lances scarcely fluttering in the windless air. The Bengal Lancers! He felt the romance of the scene: perhaps it was open warfare at last!

In a hollow of the road where the Ancre stream had been diverted to flood the village cellars, railway sleepers had been
laid. As he rode over the moving baulks, he saw a hand sticking up between two sleepers. A Yorkshire soldier among others repairing the road laughingly put the handle of a broken spade between the waxen fingers, saying, “Now then, Jerry, get on wi’ it; no bluudy skrimshankin’ ’ere!”

The road went on up rising ground beyond the village, and passing a culvert in the railway embankment, Phillip saw where the stream had been dammed. “I don’t care for that!”
remarked
Hobart. “Think of the trout that will be left high and dry!” It was strange to see green fields again, torn by only a few shell-craters. They passed through the brick-and-rafter heaps of Achiet-le-Petit, and he slept that night near the blown-up
railway
station, sharing a bell tent with Jack Hobart, warmed by the German stove, its pipe sticking out of the door flap.

Before going to sleep, he wrote in his
Charles
Lett’s
Self-Opening
Pocket
Diary
and
Note
Book
for
1917
by candle-light,
Heard
a
chiff-
chaff
in
Miraumont,
among
some
willows.

“Here’s
Comic
Cuts,
”
said Hobart, tossing over the latest CORPS SUMMARY OF INTELLIGENCE, which had just come in, marked
CONFIDENTIAL:
Not
to
be
issued
to
Commanders
of
lower
rank
than
Battalion,
Battery,
and
Field
Company
Commanders,
and
not
to
be
taken
into
Front
Line
trenches.

But a dying man would instinctively tell the truth: it is all he has to hold on to, thought Phillip.

Jack was asleep, and snoring gently. He turned down the wick of the lamp. The night was quiet. He could not sleep in the rushing silence. Then through the moonless dark came the cries of flighting mallard, flying west to the peaceful marshes of the Ancre. They would be nesting soon, he thought. For birds, the spring meant love—for men, the spring offensive, and the kiss of bullets.

In a drift of sleet they arrived next day upon wide and gently rolling downland east of the Arras-Bapaume road. Jack Hobart asked Phillip where he would like to put up his picket line, saying that the guns were to cover the Brigade front, behind the infantry screens now about a mile and a half to the east.

“About here, d’you think, Sticks? The guns will be eight hundred yards in front of you, then. Right, carry on, old boy.”

They pitched tents near the source of a small brook, which Phillip saw from his map to be the headwater of the Sensée river. Each officer had been given half a dozen cloth-back Trench Maps, with all German positions, and wire, meticulously marked on them in red. They were printed in sections of large rectangles marked by capital letters. Each rectangle was divided into squares of 1,000 yards, and numbered; and each square was
subdivided
into four smaller squares, about the size of postage stamps,
marked
a,
b,
c,
and
d.
Thus a position could be pin-pointed to within a few yards, and found by cross-reference.

The sleet which had fallen as they were leaving
Achiet-le-Grand
gave way to rain; they sat dry and happy in a shelter made of posts and rails and covered by a large black tarpaulin “won” by Phillip from the A.S.C. forage dump in Achiet station yard. The mess table made at Ascheux was still a home comfort, with the canvas armchairs. As usual, Jules made good use of the rations. Initialled whiskey bottles stood on the table with the gramophone, while everyone read letters just arrived from the post-dump at Sapignies.

When the rain stopped, Phillip told Sergeant Rivett to let the drivers and grooms graze their animals in pairs upon the grass and clover all around them. By the look of it, the place had been grazed by sheep, before the withdrawal of the Germans. But a short bite, as Jack called it, had grown since; and by the way the mules and horses cropped, they were enjoying the smell and taste of their new surroundings.

Phillip accompanied Hobart when the guns were sited.

They were placed under the higher contour lines, so that the gunners would have their targets against the skyline, should the Germans make a surprise attack. Also, being placed lower than the skyline, they would not come under direct observation from the Germans, before such an attack. He marked the gun
positions
on his map 57C N–W, on which was printed in the right top corner,
Trenches
corrected
to
5–2–17.
There was a later edition,
corrected
to
4–2–17
, of the country to the east, which took in the Siegfried Stellung, the complicated trench systems threading red through it, like the wandering veins on an inflamed eyeball under a magnifying glass.

Phillip had an idea that the Germans might sally forth from their great new underground fortress, in a series of lightning raiding columns, to destroy with gun-cotton slabs all the many batteries of guns and ammunition dumps which were coming into position before the Hindenburg Line; they might even drive through and take thousands of prisoners. If anything happened to Hobart, Pinnegar would be in command, and he did not trust Teddy, he was too easy-going, damning the staff as “Spectre” West had done, but in general, not particular, terms. If the Germans had prepared a huge trap, and open warfare began, backwards across the old Somme battlefield, of which they knew every inch … their submarines were sinking ships faster than they
could be built, Russia was just about out of the war, so it might be a case of one terrific burst to win the war, of another British retreat from Mons, but this time to the coast.

The gun-sites having been marked, he felt his mind to be neater, and returned with Hobart to camp, to write up his diary, and enter up his pay for March—£13–3–6 @ 11/6 a day, plus £3–17–6 field allowance @ 2/6 a day; add to this £10
half-quarterly
pay from the office. Not bad, £27–1–0 in one month!

Under a shining sun, he began to feel that the war was remote, that life was enjoyable, that he wouldn’t have missed any of it, the war was a tremendous adventure! The Ancre Valley was a remote memory. Green downland extended all around; the mules and horses had the run of fine, open pasture, unmarked by war. They grazed eagerly upon the growing grass, their ears upright, eyes clear, coats smoothing to glossiness, no longer staring. Patches of grey skin eroded by mud rash were growing new hair. The drivers, too, had lost the haggard, pinched look which had seemed normal in the mud.

“Have ye seen yon Alleyman graveyard?” said M’Kinnell one morning, as he groomed a mule. “’Tis a bonny sight, I’m thinking.”

Phillip went over to look at it. The small cemetery was laid out with gravel paths lined by low box-wood hedges in an intricate pattern, with beds of pansies, red daisies, and other low plants which later would flower. About this time
The
Daily
Trident,
which arrived four days late, was making much of a story, with the aid of a Belgian cartoonist named Raemaekers, of German dead being collected from the battlefields and tied “in bundles of four”, to be sent in open trucks to German factories, the fat of the cadavers being used in the manufacture of high explosive. Here in the wide and shallow bowl of upland grazing was a cemetery with half a dozen carved headstones, five of them for Germans and one for an Englishman who had died of wounds. Looking around, he saw a solitary grave about a quarter of a mile away. Walking there, he saw that it was enclosed within posts and wire. A broken four-bladed wooden propeller stood at its head. Flowers bloomed on the mound.
Here
rests
in
God
a
brave
unknown
English
flier
who
fell
in
battle
July
14,
1916.

Another afternoon, riding around the countryside, he came across a large cemetery at Ablaizanville. It had wrought-iron gates, behind which, set in turf, were cream-coloured stones and carved monuments, both Germans and British lying together. A
still larger cemetery at the edge of the village was set with wooden crosses, and some of the British shells had fallen among them, disclosing long leather boots and grey tunics, and what they contained. Father ought to see it; then he might cease to be held in the mental barbed wire of armchair hate. He thought to write a letter to
The
Daily
Trident
: but would they allow it, as they had started the Corpse Factory stuff?

He picked a few pansies from the graves, and sent some home to his mother in a letter, others to Mrs. Neville.

During a further exploration, he came to a sandy
escarpment
above a sunken road. Seeing that a tunnel had been made in the face of the cliff, which was only a few feet high, and obviously filled in, he dug with his hands and pulled out a wooden box about thirty inches square and ten deep. It had rope handles and a clip fastener. Inside were small black bombs, each in its compartment, like packed eggs. In another rack were the detonators, which could be screwed in place of a cap holding in black grains of ammonal. He filled up one, pulled the ring, and flung the bomb away. It burst after a few seconds. The box would be the very thing in which to carry souvenirs, so he put the bombs, together with the detonators, in one heap, fitted up one, pulled it, and after placing it on the heap, lay down in the sunken road. Explosion after explosion cracked unseen; when he looked up again, he saw the A.D.V.S. approaching, followed by a groom.

“What’s the game now, eh?” asked the Blue-banded Dogsbody.

“Destroying a booby trap, sir.”

When they had gone by, he hid the box, lest someone pinch it for firewood. He would pick it up later, when passing with a limber.

Life in Clover Valley, as All Weather Jack called it, continued into April. On the 3rd news came, via Brigade, that the United States of America had entered the war. They heard it with little interest. “About time, too,” remarked Pinnegar. “The Yanks have made a lot of money out of the war, lent a lot all round as well, and don’t want to lose it.”

Life went on evenly: fetching and delivering rations,
ammunition
, and fodder; carrying out divisional transporting jobs; inspecting the feet, mouths, and general condition (“top-hole”) of animals; harness, saddlery, boots and equipment of drivers daily to be oiled, soaped, polished; metal-work burnished. He left the routine work to Sergeant Rivett, and went farther afield on Black Prince, followed by Morris riding Jimmy the grey mule.

Once, after passing a cross-roads, on sudden impulse he set off at a gallop over the grass, followed by the groom who had managed to kick Jimmy into a canter; they had gone about two hundred yards when there was a tremendous explosion, and looking back, he saw a yellow-brown mushroom-shaped cloud rising behind them. A time-action mine had blown a deep crater at the cross-roads which later was railed around, lest waggons, limbers, and guns skirting its edge, topple over. It added to the spice of living.

“Look at this newspaper tripe,” said Pinnegar. “Here’s the
Trident
talking about the ‘Hun-like barbaric destruction’ of evacuated villages and ‘spiteful’ cutting-down of trees; but all the Germans have done is to make a
glacis
in front of their new fortress-line, to give clear observation for their balloons, and to cause us to expend labour and material on the building of new billets, storehouses, divisional and corps headquarters, railways, and the boring of artesian wells, which is being done everywhere. Utter bilge!”

Phillip thought that poor old Father would believe every word of it; newspapers were a kind of poisoning of the mind. After the war he would damn-well clear off, and avoid getting into the same rut, even if it meant never seeing England again: but his heart quailed at the idea.

There were some plots of coppice-wood growing in places upon the downland, planted as covert for pheasants, Hobart told him. Some wrecked huts lay about in one coppice, and among them stood what appeared to be a splendid sentry-box painted in broad diagonal bands of the German imperial colours, white, black, and red. He approached this gingerly: there were stories of all kinds of booby-traps in the area, pianos in dugouts with a particular key wired to buried explosives—someone playing
If
I
were
the
only
boy
in
the
world,
and
—roa-ar!—it would be a world entirely of girls henceforward! The sentry box looked to be an obvious booby-trap. Probably opening the door would set off a stick bomb. The door was a-jar; he pushed it with a long stick, while crouching down. Nothing happened. It was a private latrine box, let into the ground by four legs. While he and Morris were pulling it out of the ground, the dog with eyes of two colours appeared casually out of the scrub, and allowed itself to be greeted as an old friend. It followed them back to camp, returning with Potts driving a half-limber to fetch the privy, which was much admired when set up near the officers’ tents. It must have
belonged to an
oberst
at least, said Hobart—“And a very useful addition it is, especially now that these blasted north-west winds have brought back the sleet!”

During the fetching of the magnificent privy, Phillip had sat on the grass and smoked a cigarette with Tallis, asking him about his little boy. Apparently the child doted on his father, the more so for the terror of having seen his mother and sisters killed in the Silvertown explosion. “I don’t mind going west for myself, sir, it’s the little lad that worries me, if anything ’appens to me.”

“I might try to get you posted to home service, Tallis.”

“Please, sir, I didn’t mean that. I’m all right with the boys here, sir. Only if my Phil——”

“I understand. If anything happens to you, I’ll look after him, Tallis.”

*

It was strange to realise, when he looked in his note-book, that it was nearly Easter. That afternoon the company moved its
transport
line forward. Following the course of the brook, descending under the skyline, they came to Mory. There, to Phillip’s
uneasiness
, Pinnegar put up the tents on a grassy field at the highest level, the 110 contour on the map. Surely that would be visible to the Alleyman?

The afternoon turned out sunny, and the mess table was laid for tea in the open. While they were sitting there a rattle came down from the sky, and looking up, Phillip saw a lumbering B.E.2c, which had been droning in wide circles as it spotted for a howitzer battery, dropping away as a small biplane dived past it. The biplane zoomed, and climbed away into the sun, obviously to try again. Meanwhile the slow old art-obs bus seemed to be gliding down in a straight line. Then across the sky flew a small sturdy plane, which began circling as it climbed away from the scout biplane which had fired. “It’s got black crosses!” said Hobart, looking through his binoculars. The enemy plane, now above the gliding machine, turned over and dived upon it, whereupon the other scout came down vertically in pursuit. Phillip saw the hair-like smoke of tracer bullets. The machine, a Sopwith Triplane, missed the German scout, and falling fast, just managed to pull out of its dive, while almost touching the earth. The German pulled up also, but a hundred yards above, so that they saw the black crosses at the end of its wings. Rifles were being fired at it; it turned over and came down at the row of tents, firing at them with its machine gun. It passed over the tea-party
at the table so close that Phillip could see the black leather helmet of the pilot, and his face looking down. He waved a gloved hand, then flew away east, about ten feet above the ground. The B.E.2c meanwhile had continued its glide, and struck the ground, turning on its nose. There it remained, soon to be surrounded by soldiers. Word arrived, by way of Jules the chef, that the observer had been killed while in the air, and the pilot hit through the neck.