Love and the Loveless (38 page)

“Six thousand yards?”

“That’s right. And Passchendaele church, the infantry’s objective, is nearer seven thousand yards.”

“Had you not forward positions prepared?”

“Well, would we be here if we had? I ask you!”

“I am asking
you
,”
replied ‘Spectre’ West, smoothly. “Why did you not get forward?”

“Can’t you see for yourself?”

“Yes, that is what I am here for.”

Hairless, coagulated heaps lay around. Roughcast with mud, the horses lay where they had fallen, having lost the will to live.

“Here’s the major!”

“Good morning,” said ‘Spectre’ West. “I am from G.H.Q. How are you managing about ammunition supplies?”

The subaltern stared in amazement. A staff officer from G.H.Q.! Ye gods, what had he said?

“Well, it took our chaps fifteen hours to get here last night from the waggon lines, sir. We lost nine mules on the way. Some sank out of sight. We have to wash the shells in water before we can attempt to use them. I’m only at half strength, and working double shifts, anyway, or was, without reliefs. You can see the quality of our hotel accommodation.” He pointed with his staff at a heap of straw floating inside a baby elephant shelter. “But that came up too. I mustn’t forget that.” He indicated a civilian hip-bath perforated by shrapnel. “
That,
sir, is a luxury. It is not a bath. It is intended for a bed. I understand there is to be a further issue of Beds, Bathtub, Officers for use of, One.”

‘Spectre’ West threw back his cape, in order to pull out his Field Message Book 153. With pride Phillip saw the gunner’s face unstiffen as he saw the seven wound stripes above the black hand, and the ribands of D.S.O. and M.C., each with a silver rosette.

Holding the book in the crook of his left arm, ‘Spectre’ West made some notes. “I’ll do what I can, but I am an observer only,” he said.

“Thank you, sir. Are you going to cross the Steenbeek?”

“I must get over somehow. I want to get into Passchendaele if I can manage it.”

“Well, the best of luck to you! I’ll show you the way.”

It was 10 a.m., and the rain had ceased.

The three went back along the cocoanut mat, which had been laid from the teak track and gave some sort of foundation under the knee-high slop of mud.

“I think you’ll find it passable, sir, if you keep to the cocoanut matting,” said the gunner major.

Phillip waded in, to make sure that it was safe for Westy. Slowly he lifted his feet, one after the other, against the suction of mud above the layers of cocoanut matting, while prodding with his stick. Troops and pack mules passing that way had churned the pug, so that passage was through a sort of canal. “I think this is the best way,” he called out, and the next moment sank to his waist. “It’s either part of the original bed of the beek, or I’m in a shell-hole,” he said, as cold water ran into his waders. It took about two minutes to move a yard, when he found the mat under his feet again. However, he had found the way.

They sloshed on to a duck-walk, while guns cracked around them, firing along a row of pillboxes. Haifa mile ahead howitzer shells were droning down, raising inverted umbrellas of mud. “Our old friend Jack Johnson,” said ‘Spectre’ West. “That must be at Kansas Cross.” He looked at the map. “The Zonnebeke-Langemarck road should be in front of us. And that upright mark on the sky-line is Passchendaele church tower. We must get a move on.”

The duck-walk was marked by a taped row of posts, on which hurricane lamps were hanging. Within sooty glasses flickers of flame could be seen. Other duck-walks were similarly posted. Phillip lay on his back on the walk, and emptied his waders by holding up his legs.

On these narrow ribbings of wood, carrying parties, some with Yukon packs with a band on the forehead, were slowly trailing forward. Others carried 18-pounder shells in sandbags. Stretcher-bearers in groups of four struggled against being rooted among the shell-holes: desperate, haggard men, with faces the hues of mud and smoke. Walking wounded, who had collapsed, sat
head-down on the wooden path. Old German dead were lying about, swelled and waxen of face, in contrast to the recent British killed. It was always a startling sight, that of British soldiers lying dead. Although the Germans in
feld-grau
were men, too, there was no feeling from them. What was the difference? Was it the sharp-cut tunic collars, the eight buttons, the red cotton, or worsted, of the shoulder numerals? Or the sometimes shaved head, a slightly repulsive pink under the pork-pie cap? Or the knee-high leather boots? Or was there racial antagonism, deep down, quite apart from the war, as between members of the same family, his own for instance? What was it about the German dead that made him feel indifferent? The red of blood, the red of shoulder straps, the red piping of the pork-pie cap, contrasted with the modesty, the almost stupidity of khaki … if only he could think clearly and definitely about even one thing. And yet—the tremendous courage of the infantry, to keep on, despite this fearful horror! He himself would never again be able to stand a set attack. Almost worse was the exposure, the sleeplessness, life without horizon. He had a tent, and a stove, comparative safety, and a warm bed. It was easy to feel no fear under such conditions. But these poor sprawled and tumbled dead—had they got beyond fear, beyond pain? Lines from
The
Mistress
of
Vision
recurred in his head.

They came to Kansas Cross, and turned left-handed behind a line of field guns along the site of the old road. ‘Spectre’ West’s destination was a brigade H.Q. at the Green House. This was sign-posted. Picking a way by tape, they came to a blockhouse around which troglodytic figures lay in a shapeless row. Mud had been clawed from these wounded men awaiting with the patience of death for ambulances, which were held up until the beech-slab road was laid from Zonnebeke.

The Green House lay below the Gravenstafel ridge, out of
direct observation of the German posts. Inside the massive concrete and steel blockhouse, with its smell of phosgene, stale smoke, sweat, and putredinous scatter of blood and brains and hair on bomb-pocked floor and walls, the Brigadier sat at luncheon with his brigade-major, intelligence officer, and a doctor. When ‘Spectre’ bent to enter the doorway, squeezing through the low space made smaller by a steel door buckled against the lintel, the Brigadier was about to cut into a cold partridge on a tin plate with wooden-handled French knife and fork. He had already offered to share this delicacy, out of a parcel from home, with his two officers, but they had politely refused.

Putting down knife and fork, he greeted the two newcomers curtly, for he was annoyed to be disturbed, after the emotions of the past forty-eight hours without sleep, mental relief, or physical ease. He was fifty-six years of age and had been wondering if he was about to be stellenbosched.

A couple of tommy-cookers, round tins of solidified spirit, were heating enamel mugs of coffee.

“What do you want?” he demanded, as a salvo of shells howled down and burst at Kansas Cross.

“I am from G.H.Q., General. I am Major West. I have come to hear the worst.”

“How d’you do. Well, you’ve come to the right place. Sit down. May I offer you some bird?”

Phillip kept a straight face; it sounded like the bird, except that regular officers didn’t speak like that.

“Thank you, General, but we have had our lunch. I am sorry to intrude on you, but my concern is to get the facts back to my Chief as soon as possible.”

“Which side are you on?”

Again Phillip made his face blank. Did the old boy think they were German spies?

“O A, General.”

“Oh, you’re one of Jack Davidson’s spies. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get some tuck down my throat. My intelligence officer will tell you what you want to know.”

The captain with blood-shot eyes spoke slowly, with breaks to smooth his forehead with a hand. The march-up had been late, owing to some of the taped and lantern’d duck walks being shelled, as well as crushed and dislocated by mule packs. It took place in the total obscurity of a rainy night, without moon or stars. In places the laden infantry had lost direction. Some,
stumbling apart from their platoon files only so much as a yard, had sunken helplessly into shell-holes and been drowned. The survivors had gone on, each man holding to the knapsack of the man in front, to arrive at the tape line, after more than fourteen hours’ continuous going, in no condition for the fight. Some had arrived after zero hour. Those who, emerging from the lines of pill-boxes captured five days previously by other troops, had tried to follow a weak and fitful creeping barrage, but failed. Many of the shells of the barrage had fallen short among the little groups trying to wind a way round shell-holes lipped with water. The H.E. shells, which formed a fair part of the barrage, buried themselves deep in the mud and so limited their effect. Without proper guidance from the barrage, the infantry had come up against belts of new wire, thirty yards in breadth, and been shot down where they stood, unable to lie down because they were fixed to their knees in mud. Their Lewis guns were totally useless, they got clogged.

“I can offer you café-au-lait,” said the Brigadier, with a sign to his batman.

The doctor said that some of the wounded had later managed to get back to the pill-box line from where they had started. These pill-boxes were now overfilled with wounded who had received no attention since they had crawled into shelter the day before. Other wounded men were still lying out.

“Where are the stretcher bearers, doctor?”

“A few are still on their feet, sir, but most have worked themselves to a standstill, during forty-eight hours without sleep or rest.”

“How many do you consider are wanted, to get in the wounded on your brigade front?”

“Owing to the state of the ground, four reliefs will be required to carry a wounded man on a stretcher to the dressing station under Hill 40 near Zonnebeke station. They will take up to four hours for the double journey, provided the rain does not increase. There are about two hundred stretcher cases.”

“When you say four reliefs do you mean each relief to be four men?”

“Yes. Sixteen bearers to get a stretcher to the dressing station.”

“And two hundred stretcher cases?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about German prisoners?”

“There were, and are likely to be, none.”

“You’ll need about a thousand men.” ‘Spectre’ wrote in his book. Then, “Before I go, I’d like to know exactly where the new wire belts are. I’ll make some notes, first, with your permission, General.”

He wrote down the map reference, then giving the book to Phillip, said, “Write at my dictation, if you please.”

“Thank you.” He signed the notes, and they went out into the rain.

After a visit to another brigade H.Q. ‘Spectre’ West made his way, followed by Phillip, along the Zonnebeke road, for about a mile. Timber baulks were being laid beyond the dressing station at Hill 40. Behind the rise they turned left-handed, past the ruins of the station, and made directly for the line. Tired bullets buzzed and sighed down. The ground, which was sandy, and made fair going, had been in enemy hands less than a week before; German dead, fully equipped, even to hairy cowhide packs, lay everywhere, some still holding bayoneted rifles. They were the
sturm-truppen
of the 4th Reserve Guards division whose attack on 4 October, set for 6.10 a.m., had been boxed up by the Australians who had attacked at 6 a.m.

“Where are we going, Westy?”

“I am going as far as I can go without being shot. Do you wish to turn back?”

“No,
mein
prächtig
kerl!
How about a spot of lunch?”

“Not for me. This is the Roulers railway embankment.” He looked at his map-case. “Just north of Nieuwenmolen railway crossing, at Tyne Cot, the Germans still hold the Flandern I position. The Second West Pennine division holds this sector, and I want to see how far they have got.” He did not say that the fifth step, planned to be taken in less than forty-eight hours, was based on the assumption that the wire was non-existent
along Flandern I, and that the last line of
Mannschafts-Eisenbeton-
Unterstände
(
mebus
to the Staff, pill-box to the fighting soldier) had already been captured.

*

The railway entered what had been a cutting, but now was a prolonged mounding of earth like a scar, strung with wild loops of half-buried rusty wire, in the slope of rising ground to the skyline. A German trench crossed the cutting. This, said a notice, was
Daring
Crossing,
the Red Line. The trench had been deep, and revetted with posts and rough basket-work of willow, but the bombardment of the previous week had smashed, buried, and upturned most of it. A muddy twisted tape lay along it. They must now be close to the front line, thought Phillip, following behind ‘Spectre’ West. Did he know where he was going? If the attack the day before had failed, wasn’t this still the front line? As though the same thought had come to him, the older man stopped, and looked at his map.