Love and the Loveless (44 page)

The new patients lay still, fags concealed in practised palms; the company passed; then a party of toughs joined the rear of the column and jumped on the backs of a
feldwebel,
a
hauptmann,
and one other. Cries, shouts, screams as Lewis guns rattled. Fifty Germans were killed, and thrice that number taken prisoner.

*

At 10 p.m., when 286 M arrived, fighting by bomb and bayonet was going on in the trenches west of the beet-sugar factory beside the Cambrai road. By midnight all sixteen of the company’s guns were emplaced: seven around Graincourt, nine covering the gap to the sugar factory a thousand yards away.

It had been raining for seven hours.

The company headquarters were under the church. Going down to see Pinnegar, Phillip came to a sort of crypt. Brick pillars supported a vaulted roof. On the floor hundreds of men were lying asleep.

Below the crypt several stairways led down into the chalk. They were steep, and timbered as usual, but had about double the usual number of steps. At the bottom was a gallery, lit along its length by electric bulbs diminishing in the distance.

It was a maze of turnings and doors, and almost asphyxiatingly hot, with fug of tobacco smoke, sweat, paraffin vapour of Primus stoves, and burnt cooking fat: an atmosphere horridly quivering with the pulses of the diesel engine driving the dynamo in one of the rooms. The vibration seemed to be pumping the stomach, by way of the ear-drums.

Going up and down corridors, trying to find Pinnegar, he came upon the engine room, getting a sickening shock when a door opened and two Germans came out, carrying red-banded boxes. A momentary shock: this was no subterranean invasion, but a clearing of charges of ammonal, many boxes of it, that had been hidden behind the boards of one wall of the little room adjoining the engine-house. The two German engineers had been running the plant for some months, it being divisional headquarters. The R.E. officer superintending the removal of high explosives told Phillip that the old Hun had apparently not overlooked the chance of the place being captured some day,
for there were two hundred kilograms of ammonal hidden under the catacombs.

“Was there a time fuse?”

“No. The detonator was connected direct to the main switch, or what anyone would reasonably take to be the main starting switch, wired to the batteries. It was damned fortunate that the Boy General got here first, and ordered the two Huns to carry on with the lighting arrangements, for one of them said, in effect, that if that was so, he might as well point out that what looked like the main switch was a starting switch, at least not for the engine alone, but for the end of the war as far as everyone around was concerned. They added that if their services were going to be retained by the new board of directors, they thought it their duty to show the Herr foreman where to dig for the explosives. They were able to show the precise spots, under floors and timber casings of walls, since they had buried the stuff there in the first place!”

Phillip felt sick. It was like being in the boat to Ostend,
Pieter
der
Konig,
going to see Mavis at the convent at Wespaelar. There was the same steady shiver of the engine through the walls, and the thud of shells or guns coming down from above was like the bows lifting up and plunging down into big waves. He looked for a lavatory, there must be one somewhere, but how would they get the stuff away. Pumping perhaps—pumping:
his
damned heart was pumping in his ears and pumping water into his mouth.

Round one corner he heard horrible singing, as two soldier servants washed plates and cups in a bucket of steaming water, while smoking cigars. He opened a door, and saw a Madame Tussaud’s scene—one that would have made Teddy livid—an elderly Brigadier sitting in a crimson plush armchair, a round pedestal library table upon which his booted legs rested, a fire burning in a white tiled stove on which flowers were painted, a shelf above it with looking glass, before which stood a French carriage clock, its pendulum visible behind the glass case. On the walls were oleographs of the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and Field-Marshal von Hindenburg; while spread upon the table was a large-scale map of Bourlon Wood printed in German.

“What the devil do you want?” cried the Brigadier-General.

“Sorry, sir, I thought this was the lavatory.”

He returned to the little room adjoining the engine, and in the chalk cavity behind the ripped panelling found a convenient place. After all, exchange was no robbery!

“Where shall I place my picket line, Teddy?”

“Christ knows. I don’t. It’s up to you.”

“I think the best place is in Havrincourt. There’s probably water there. Well, cheerio. I’ll be up in the morning, to see you.”

The drivers had three days emergency rations: one tin each of bully beef, Maconochie stew, and pork-and-beans; a pound and a half of biscuits in a linen bag, and shares in tins of butter and plum-and-apple jam. Someone got a fire going behind a wall standing amidst the ruins of Havrincourt, facing away from the enemy—although flares were going up on either side as well as in front. Phillip uncovered the rum jar, and poured about a quart and a half into the steaming dixie of tea boiled with sugar. A cheerful timeless binge followed. The convoy had got through. Soon drivers were creeping on hands and knees to sleep beside bales of hay and oat sacks overlaid by tarpaulins.

Unable to sleep for cold, he went to find out what was behind a light glimmering in the remains of the Havrincourt château. Gun-flashes revealed two motorcars standing outside, with the stencil of a bantam cock. With luck he might find somewhere to sleep. It was the 40th Divisional Headquarters. To the two sentries by the door he said good-evening, and walked inside, to see faces around a table on which stood German beer-bottles winking with candles. The General was looking at a large map. Men with red tabs were writing on pads, on their knees. The conference seemed about over, for soon message books were being shut, armfuls of maps collected and tied in bundles. He went away into the night and as he waited there he heard one of the officers asking where he could find a pole, or a stout stick. He helped in the search, thinking it wise to say who he was, in case the sentries were suspicious; and hearing the tank officer ask about the way to Graincourt, said that he had just come from there, and would direct him. He was asked about headquarters of brigades, and told them where his own were, under the church; and with white bundles of maps for the next attack slung on a clothes’ prop, the officer and his orderly set out. Phillip returned to the château, and tried to sleep under the table of the empty conference room, but it was too cold, he was wet, water squelched in his boots when he got up to swing his arms. His head ached, from the extra rum he had drunk.

“Yes, it is wonderful news,” said Richard, on the Friday morning at breakfast. “I wonder if Phillip will be in this?” He held open
The
Daily
Trident,
with its black headline of CAMBRAI VICTORY! “We have, according to the report, made an advance four to five miles deep with hundreds of tanks on a front of ten miles, taken thousands of prisoners and a great number of guns! Listen to this, Hetty! ‘Our tanks might have been waltzing through the Hun barbed wire.’ Thank heaven that the powers that be seem to have stirred their stumps at last!”

In Head Office there was quiet satisfaction all the morning. Then at midday something extraordinary happened. Mavis, going upstairs to the Luncheon Room, heard noon striking, as usual, from the clock of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Head Messenger, returning from Lloyd’s, said that the carillon of St. Paul’s Cathedral was playing a tune. “I last heard that when Peace was declared, at the end of the South African War, sir,” he
told Richard and others in the ground floor Town Department. The news spread. Could the Germans have surrendered? Paul, the tenor bell, was heard striking noon. The manager of the Department went into the street, as the cathedral clock was striking noon. Immediately afterwards they heard Great Paul, the tenor bell, booming. The sonorous echoes were followed by the full peal of twelve bells; immediately afterwards, at the signal, all the City churches followed with wildly clashing noise. People were coming into the streets, waving hands and handkerchiefs, half the Town Department went out, leaving Richard working at his desk. He wanted to follow, but tears were dropping from his eyes. Mavis ran down the mezzanine iron stairs, overcome by the general feeling. On the pavement she thought of Albert Hawkins, who had been killed, O, long ago; she prayed silently for his soul; she thought of her mother, alone in the house, poor Mother … but she would have Mrs. Bigge next door, and also Gramps and darling Aunt Marian. Poor Doris, she would be thinking of cousin Percy, killed over a year ago now; poor Aunt Liz and Uncle Jim, what could Victory mean to them? It was all wrong, these people could not possibly understand. Nobody really understood, Phillip by now was probably tipsy, with his safe job. Still, it would make Mother happy, she doted on her donkey-boy, mothers always did care more for their first child than for the others. She could not bear the cheering, it was awful, why waste time, she was having first lunch at twelve o’clock, there was nothing really to rejoice for. And going back into the office, she saw that old Journend was crying, and Father was blowing his nose loudly. He would! Soon it was over, and she was back at her desk, working away under green-shaded electric light.

The Field-Marshal had said that “no further offensive operations could be attempted, but that he was satisfied that the plan for the 27th offered every chance to secure the main object,” which he described as “to capture and hold the best line for the winter”. Thereupon he left.

The General commanding the Guards division objected to the plan for the 27th. The advance of the Guards would be “exposed to artillery fire from the high ground north of Romilly, and also from behind the Bourlon ridge and the western outskirts of Cambrai. The objective to be reached was 1,800 yards; he had only six battalions available for whole operation. The assault upon Romilly was essential to the attack to secure the Bourlon ridge”.

In effect, he said, the Guards were asked to make a salient out of a salient: and if resources were not sufficient for this attack, it would be advisable to withdraw from the low ground and establish a main line of defence upon the Flesquières ridge.

The Third Army commander decided that the attack must take place as planned. He was aware, he said, that the London division, then in the Achiet-le-Petit area, represented the last of the reinforcements he could expect, and that, “whatever the fortunes of the morrow, the Third Army’s offensive must be brought to an end”.

Thereupon orders were issued that the object of the Guards, with 12 tanks, was to “gain all the ground from which the enemy can observe our batteries, and to take the village of
Fontaine”. The East Pennine division was to attack in line with the Guards, to secure, with 20 tanks, the northern part of Bourlon Wood, and the village.