War Classics (23 page)

At last there was an excited waving of hands, and the traffic man imperatively summoned us nearer. The car that was to have the honour of taking us to Vimy was an American Red Cross car, with the most uncommunicative driver I had ever struck. He did just say, ‘Pleased to take you, Miss,’ as we mounted the box beside him.

The traffic man beneath was beaming. ‘Come back soon,’ he called to us, as the driver engaged the clutch and we bounded forward. The American’s eyes were on the horizon with the strained gaze of a pilot scanning a narrow channel.

‘You’re not going for wounded, are you?’ I enquired timidly and somewhat foolishly.

‘St Catherine,’ he said tersely, turning his eyes for a moment to what seemed a sea of ruins on our left.
5
Our course lay in the midst of such, until we presently came to a stretch with camps on either side. ‘Balmoral Camp’ took my eye and turned my thoughts to home. Our presence on the box was a source of eager interest to the troops on either side. A wave of the hand, a cheery greeting, a smile and we were past.

Then we came to open country and the road wound upwards. Stretches of barbed wire, gashes in the ground, trails of camouflage, sandbags in heaps, told us where we were. But they were far less noticeable than they had been from the railway. Our eyes commanded a wide stretch of country, sweeping away to the horizon. For miles all around the air was pure and sweet, and the horror of Thiepval seemed far behind. We saw nobody at all and it was hard to realise that so short ago this had been a battlefield for thousands. Only a lonely cross here and there – or a group of crosses – suggested it. I had begun to fear our American had forgotten all about us and was prepared to carry us to the end of the world when all at once, in the centre of the
champaign
[plain] and at its crest, he stopped.

‘This is the Ridge,’ he said. ‘I’m going on to Lens. Goodbye.’ Hardly waiting for our thanks, he whizzed off and we were alone.
6

The silence was unbroken; the land was desolate. Almost afraid to break the quiet, we moved on to the grass, and with a cry of delight, I stooped down and picked a flower. It was the commonest little yellow thing, which grows in unnoticed thousands at home, but I held it reverently and greedily and the Hut Lady looked at it too.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she said lingeringly, stroking it petal by petal. To find a flower after all that we had seen, seemed a miracle.

We moved on and picked up bits of shells, bullets, stray bits of camouflage: all the odds and ends left over from the fighting. The Hut Lady, with more energy than I had, was plunging along a trench while I sat thinking on the parapet, when suddenly a voice said courteously at my side, ‘Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea?’

If I had been a screaming person, I would have screamed then. I merely started violently and looked up. An English officer, in immaculate uniform, looked amusedly down at me. He held out a billy can in one hand. ‘Oh, thank you,’ I murmured, utterly tongue-tied.

‘Sorry there aren’t any cups,’ he went on, ‘but perhaps you will manage with this. My men always make tea just now. It’s eleven o’clock, you know.’

The Hut Lady, hearing the sound of voices, appeared from her trench. She saw me and a strange officer each grasping one end of a billy can, as if in the act of plighting our troth. But she was not nearly as taken aback as I was.

‘Oh Tiny, how nice,’ she cried, scrambling up. ‘Is it actually tea?’

It appeared that the officer, with another, and their men were engaged in clearing up the battle area and found the job rather monotonous. They were eager to show us all they could, when we had finished the tea.

‘You would like to go down a dugout, wouldn’t you?’ asked our guide affably. ‘I’ll take you down one of ours and one of the Boche’s. His are far the best, of course.’

We scrambled down into a trench and he led the way. ‘Down here,’ he pointed. ‘Wait till I light the candle and watch out – the steps are rather slippery.’ Before us yawned a cavern, with an almost perpendicular staircase of dripping yellowish mud. I decided not to go first. The Hut Lady and the other officer went on, she chattering eagerly all the while. ‘Come along,’ said my friend, ‘it’s quite easy.’

Helped and propped at elbow and shoulder, I managed to descend. A couple of bunks, like those in a steamer, confronted me on the right. They were very low roofed, very narrow and completely dark. Only the wavering light of the candle enabled me to see them at all.

‘Officers’ bunks,’ said the guide briefly. I shivered. ‘This is a topping big dugout,’ said my companion, in tones of admiration. ‘It has a passage right through, so that you can get out at the other side,’ and he proceeded to indicate a narrow tunnel in complete blackness, down which I saw the bent and disappearing forms of the Hut Lady and her escort. Moreover, the candle was going with them, and in a minute I should see nothing.

‘I’m not going there,’ I cried out, ‘I’m not going there at all.’

My companion looked blank. ‘It comes up the other side,’ he explained in bewilderment.

‘I’m not going,’ I repeated, ‘oh, please take me up before it gets dark.’

He began to understand I was terrified, and though he was perfectly polite, he could not prevent a broad smile. ‘It won’t get dark,’ he said, comfortingly. ‘There’s always light from the trench, you know.’

I was already back at the foot of the staircase. The coats left in the bunks no longer interested me, whether they were Boche or British. ‘Oh, there are these awful steps yet,’ I cried in dismay, as I faced the slithering yellow wall. ‘I don’t know how you ever summoned up the courage to come down here,’ I cried with a despairing wail, as I edged my way up.

‘Courage!’ he echoed indignantly. ‘Do you know this is one of the very finest dugouts and that you’d be jolly lucky to get to it. If you stayed up there, you’d be shelled.’

By this time I was well ‘up there’ and even as I stumbled in the slippery ooze of the trench, I heaved a sigh of relief. ‘It’s awful,’ I said shortly, and we walked on in silence.
7

‘Come, and I’ll show you a big gun emplacement – Boche,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘and then we’ll look at the Canadian memorial.’

My eyes had turned to the horizon again, to the heights that once were St Eloi. Someone I knew lay there, who had been a Canadian, and it was too far for me to go. I could only see the Ridge where he had been killed, and not the place where he lay.
8
I went quietly to the big gun emplacement. It seemed untouched, and even to my inexperienced eyes, of amazing strength.

‘We got held up here I don’t know how long,’ he explained. ‘You see how well it is screened and how it commands all this stretch of ground.’

I wandered out in search of souvenirs when a sharp, ‘Don’t touch that!’ rang out. My hands were on a beautiful large shell case – or so I thought – with a bright red mark on it.

‘I can’t lift it anyhow,’ I said regretfully, still fingering it.

He tore my hands away. ‘Good God,’ he cried in – I suppose – justifiable indignation. ‘You’re afraid to go down the finest dugout on the Ridge and you play with an unexploded shell. Don’t you know what that red mark means?’

‘No,’ I said meekly, rather afraid of him now.

‘That it’s dangerous,’ he snapped, ‘not inspected yet by the Royal Engineers. This place is full of them. We’re only just beginning to clear up.’ We walked on in silence.

‘It must be wonderful to live up here,’ I ventured after a little. ‘So open, and you see such long distances and there’s nobody at all to disturb you.’

‘Jolly lonely sometimes,’ he returned. ‘Would you like to come up for a weekend?’

‘Like to come?’ I echoed. ‘I’d just love it, but we’ve only got four days. We must go back tomorrow.’

‘Put down those things you’re carrying,’ he said, glancing at my armful of spent bullets, bits of camouflage, bits of shells and flowers. ‘No one will touch them here and I’ll snap you at the foot of Canada’s cross.’

The great high cross, with Canada in white letters, stood high on the crest of the ridge. The bright March sunlight danced on the white letters and picked out with silver the grey cross. The keen March wind blew like the winds of home over all the quiet field. The Hut Lady and I sat in the shadow of the memorial and looked towards St Eloi.
9

I have never seen the snapshots for, though our officer carefully took our names and addresses down on his map, he forgot to send them. It was quite natural that he should, I reflected afterwards, for, of all things in France, memory is the shortest. When we came down again, I searched for my treasures, but the little heap was gone. The officer, very perturbed, looked puzzled for a moment, and then he recollected. ‘Oh, there are Chinks hereabouts, clearing up,’ he told me. ‘They must have passed this way.’ We had seen and heard nothing, but I was getting used by now to people springing out of nowhere on this strange battlefield.

‘It’s like the
Pilgrim’s Progress
,’ I said suddenly. ‘Remember when Christian climbs the Hill, his burden falls away. I’m not sorry it’s gone now.’

The officer stared in some bewilderment. He had not been brought up on the
Pilgrim’s Progress
. ‘My men will gather you some things instead,’ he promised.

‘I wish we could stay up here, Tiny,’ said the Hut Lady wistfully, ‘while it is like this and before the tourists come. It would be such fun to sleep in those dugouts.’

I shivered. First Roisel and then Vimy – for a respectable English lady, the Hut Lady had most extraordinary tastes. ‘Now we’ll have to be getting back,’ I said regretfully. ‘I wonder if we can get a car.’

‘Oh yes,’ said the officer quickly, ‘there’s sure to be one if you come to the road – that’s if you must go.’

‘There’s only one thing I haven’t seen,’ I said slowly, as we went down towards the road.

‘What’s that? We’ll show it you,’ said my escort eagerly.

‘A dead Boche,’ I said. ‘I suppose you won’t show me that?’

‘No, I won’t,’ he said firmly. ‘You shouldn’t want to see that.’

My eyes strayed to the little lonely cemeteries, in their hundreds, all around us. The men who lay there were so far from Canada and had given up so much. There was the man who lay at St Eloi and who would never see Scotland again. I turned to my escort. ‘It’s the thing I want to see most,’ I said slowly, ‘and there’s many a woman would tell you that.’

His eyes were uncomprehending. ‘Disgusting,’ he said. ‘Now tell me when you’ll come back for a weekend.’

I laughed. We had not long to wait on the road. In a few moments a French motor lorry came rumbling along, and pulled up at the sight of us. We climbed up, bade our friends farewell, and whirled back to Arras. It was the first French driver I had been with, and after some debate, we decided to tip him. We had only once tried to tip an English soldier and the experience had been so devastating that we had never tried again. But when he let us down at Arras Cathedral, I handed him five francs which he accepted without a murmur and indeed as if he had expected more.

The shell of the cathedral still stood, in part, roofless, and with its interior heaped with stones and rubble. But, as a ruin, it seemed much more impressive and beautiful than, I think, it could have done when new. Especially so today, with the sky a vault of deepest blue bending over the grey stone. We clambered over the ruins till we faced the high altar which still stood unbroken. The great gaps torn in the walls by the hurricane of shells, yawned before us like gashes. The whole place was a living accusation against the evil in man. No wonder the French Government has decided to keep it as it is for a standing witness against the Boche.
10

We were sitting eating our last scraps of bread and chocolate, when the vivid ‘
horizon bleu
’ struck in between us and the grey, and a small French Corporal with half a dozen of his men, stood before us. They saluted and eyed us curiously. I looked at the row of ribbons on the Corporal’s breast. ‘
Vive l’Angleterre
,’ began the Corporal encouragingly. It was his first remark. He was standing directly in front of me with his men grouped around him.

‘
Vive la France
,
monsieur
,’ I returned calmly, ‘
et à bas les Boches
.’ [‘down with the Boche’]

‘
Ah! Les sales Boches
,’ [‘Ah! The filthy Boche,’] he growled, looking round at the ruined cathedral. He was from the South, he told us, from Carcassonne, and all his fighting had been at Verdun; he and his men had got a few days’ leave to come up and see the North. They were like strange, shy children – not like grown men at all, I thought. And they had with them the poetry of the South. ‘I am glad,’ the Corporal told me gravely, ‘to meet Mademoiselle here,’ – and his gaze wandered round the ruined walls, and rested by the great high altar, in front of which we were. ‘It is right that England and France should be together here, and
les sales Boches
without – always without’ – his deep notes were like a curse.

I was surprised, indeed, at the fineness of the thought coming from a plain soldier; it seemed to me more like a visionary or a poet to picture England and France together before the altar in the heart of the battle zone! Yet here we were and behind the symbols he had caught the idea. A gang of Boche prisoners were working outside – he had seen them as he came in. The Hut Lady, looking more English than the English themselves, surveyed him suspiciously at this flight of imagination. She poked the stones with her umbrella in the hope, I think, of distracting him, though she said it was to look for souvenirs.

The Corporal produced his notebook. ‘If Mademoiselle would write her name and address,’ he begged. I did so gravely, and then he motioned to one of his men to ask the same of the Hut Lady.

At last, taking their great dark eyes away from us, they retired silently whence they had come. ‘Mark my words,’ said the Hut Lady with amusement, ‘an impassioned love letter will follow. You haven’t done so badly for one day, Tiny, first the Major and now the Corporal.’ Sure enough, the letter did come, even more fervent in tone than any I received from my lonely soldiers!