The Somme (3 page)

In fine weather they were almost happy, and, dog-tired always, sound sleep came as a gift in the most cramped quarters. In the freshness of the morning the breakfasts of fragrant bacon were glorious indeed. The hot strong tea, and white bread far better than they were getting at home, were wolfed with eager appetite, and always there was a rush to the sooty dixie for the sake of the bacon-fat and greasy crackling that afford so tasty a dish when bread is used to sop them. Often porridge was added, so thick that it was possible to invert the dixie and no harm done. Unaffectedly living to eat, meals and mails were the only landmarks in monotonous days. For dinner came potatoes boiled in their skins and nondescript watery stew. On gala days roast beef appeared, and sometimes duff took the place of nauseous rice.

Apart from fatigues, drill consisted only in the inspection of rifles, but excuse for a full-dress parade was found in a message from the Brigadier. To hear his sacred words the battalion was drawn up in mass behind the wood, where a prying aeroplane might have stirred the enemy's artillery to serious activity. (But obviously risks must be run to hear a General's voice.) It seemed that that great man loved his men like a father, and that his children were to be praised for their prowess. They had done splendidly, and the high standard attained was never to be lowered. To the old hands the General expressed his thanks; to the new he said approximately ‘Go thou and do likewise.' All and sundry were bidden ‘never to forget the traditions of their battalion and brigade,' and it was obvious that storms were to be expected. The proceedings terminated with the distribution of ‘Divisional Cards,' for all the world like prizes at a Sunday-school Treat, and the shame of the recipients was only equalled by the ribaldry of the audience. For these cards certified that the holder had distinguished himself in action at such a time and such a place, and even bore the signature of Olympus. The theory was that by this means a spirit of emulation was aroused, and it was reckoned that three of these cards meant a military medal in the rations. ‘The Tommies are such children!' Such was life in Reserve.

A week later the Loamshires were still behind Trones Wood. There were rumours that the Fusilier Battalion of the Brigade had ‘done a stunt' that day, and during the afternoon a barrage on the left flank confirmed the story. These same rumours declared that in the event of ‘the stunt being a washout' (in other words, some hundreds of men being killed to no purpose), the Loamshires were certain to ‘have a cut at it.' To most of the men of the new drafts this was the final calamity. Six weeks in a quiet part of the Belgian line had given them little realization of the wholesale slaughter of a big offensive. War in the north was static, a leisurely thing to be studied and assimilated, an orderly business concern calculated to last for centuries. There on the Somme the pace was so hot that all men realized it could not outlast the autumn. If a decision could be reached before the rains, well; otherwise a third war-winter as a prelude to the easy optimism of yet another ‘spring push!' Revolving these pleasant themes, and feeding on peculiarly lurid scraps of reminiscence with which, as novices, they had been favoured by the veterans, it would have seemed there was ample excuse for a sleepless night. As a matter of unromantic fact, neither the forebodings of to-morrow's transactions nor the howitzer battery not fifty yards away prevailed in the least against the drug of the past month's labours.

Midnight awoke them. To the weary men curled up in their blankets came the order, abrupt and stentorian: ‘Get ready to move off. Hurry – there's no time to waste.' (As though the whole business were anything but a grotesque waste of time.) In the dense darkness patches of light showed candles in sheltered corners. From the murmur of talk only oaths could be distinguished, for every one knew the meaning of an unexpected midnight call. The battalion was ‘for it' – time would show to what extent. In an instant the old man of the sea was firmly in his saddle again, the familiar incubus of vague anxiety and lurking dread. It was owing to his temporary dethronement that bedtime and forgetfulness were the boons of the day.

It was a mad scramble to collect the paraphernalia of equipment – a day's rations had of course been distributed overnight – but somehow the various straps and buckles were adjusted over greatcoats, and the rifles, gas-masks and ground-sheets slung and stowed as well as might be. In half an hour the battalion was strung along the road in column of fours, desperately tired, vaguely apprehensive, yawning with sleepiness, and with a temper blown to rags. Roll was called and flurried stragglers literally unearthed from their strayed paths. What was the game? Where were they going? No one knew, but the line was their obvious destination.

Progress was maddeningly slow. In the darkness the road was blocked with all manner of traffic – lorries, ambulances, limbers, troops coming and going, fatigue-parties bearing strange burdens. So dense was the gloom that one rank could hardly see another, and every halt meant a stumbling collision and a hearty interchange of curses. Soon it was necessary to leave the road, and the column divided into two single files on the banks by the wayside. There the shelled ground provided a succession of pitfalls and invisible holes opened beneath vainly groping feet. Rifles make good sounding-rods, but always men were stumbling and falling, collapsing with a crash of rifle and equipment, often sousing themselves liberally with mud and water in the deeper craters. The language was epic, and to the blind audience the humour of these invisible catastrophes far outweighed their exasperation to the victim. But before the spectators had done laughing they themselves were impartially engulfed.

At one point in the road a horse-ambulance had tilted sideways into a huge shell-hole in the pavé, and, always in utter darkness, a mob of men was trying to right it. The helpless wounded on the stretchers had some of them been canted into the mud of the road, and others were clinging desperately to the straps of their cots. The groans in the darkness, the confusion of the traffic blocked round the ambulance, the babble of men and mules jostling in the mud, made a fantastic extremity of misery.

At the end of the first mile the companies separated to artillery-formation, and the connecting files had the best of the bargain: at least they were able to walk without continual collisions. For an interminable time the sorry procession stumbled slowly forward. It would advance perhaps a hundred yards, halt for five minutes, advance fifty yards, and halt again, ever without apparent rhyme or reason. Vindictive messages were passed from the rear! ‘Why the devil don't we move on?' No one knew, and no answer ever returned from the van. After each halt the pace was rushed to the next, where the ranks concertinaed in abrupt collision. At such times the messages grew frantic. ‘“B” Company lost touch in rear.' ‘Halt in front.' ‘Step short.' ‘Why don't they run all the way?' And then a long interval of querulous questioning: ‘Are they all up in rear?' ‘Where the hell is “A” Company?' until the legion of the lost ones closed up, sweating and blasphemous. The rear of the column invariably suffers on these occasions, and it is incredibly easy to lose connection in the dark over rough ground.

Ten minutes' rest followed two hours' marching (to all, that is, save those unfortunates who were still frantically ‘closing up'). Collapsing on a muddy bank, half the men fell instantly asleep, careless where they were lying and anxious only to be let alone. Roused after all too short a halt, the battalion now left the roads for what had once been fields, but were now a greasy wilderness of holes and ridges. To avoid straying, the battalion formed one long file, and each man strained eyes and muscles to keep in touch with his leader: it was a mystery how the guide found his way through the darkness. A little ahead shells were falling, and soon the whole line was under fire. This was no heavy bombardment, however – merely the desultory shelling of lines of communication. All routes were picked out by the hawk-eyed aeroplanes, and every road and track scientifically ‘searched' nightly with high-explosive. The ‘four-point fives' whistled and moaned through the darkness, growing to a nerve-shaking, vicious hiss when near enough to be judged ‘nasty.' The orange flash of their explosion glared ahead and behind and on either side, and often it seemed that shells had fallen right among the men. But they could pitch astonishingly near without physical damage, and there were few casualties. It is the moral effect of their shattering explosion, the dread of the rising whine of their approach, that gives them half their value.

Out in the fields the mud was thicker, and the task of putting one foot before the other absorbed every ounce of energy. The bog sucked greedily at heel and toe and only released embedded feet reluctantly. A fall into the morass plastered men from head to foot, and rifles became clotted and utterly useless. Occasionally it was necessary to cross a trench, and few cared to risk a leap in the dark. More usually a man clambered down the slippery bank, falling into mud and water at the bottom. The rifle of the man ahead served as a grapnel to drag him up again, and he in his turn helped his neighbour. At first the Verey lights only just climbed above the curve of the ridges ahead, but soon they rose higher and yielded welcome light. Also they revealed twisted bodies beside the track, husks of men whose warfare was accomplished. It was peculiarly horrible to fall face downwards on a dead man. The rattle of snipers and machine-guns grew louder, but in the morass of mud in front of the field-guns raiding was impossible and the firing was scanty. From one trouble they were free: all the barbed wire had been blown to tatters by the shelling of weeks.

Dawn broke about four o'clock and the battalion was still far from its destination. A daylight relief was evidently to be attempted, for by this time it was known that the Fusiliers had been badly cut up, and that they were utterly incapable of holding the line. In the absence of communication trenches dawn was the more dangerous, but at least it was possible to see foothold, and the helpless blundering in the darkness yielded to more purposeful labours. Also, the friendly daylight put an end to the staggering concussion of unsuspected guns a yard or so away, and some kind of world, dismal and shattered indeed, but welcome after the chaos of the night, gradually took shape from the darkness.

Some complicated manœuvres or company formation followed in the grey dawning, and this involved an apparently aimless circling round a group of splintered trees. After an hour no advance had been made, and it was broad daylight when, in parties of ten and twenty, the Loamshires straggled over the last ridge. Thus clearly visible, there seemed no reason why they should not be annihilated; but the enemy preferred to encourage them, and the shelling grew no harder. The front line was sited on the forward slope of a line of low hills, and the Fusiliers were leaving it as the Loamshires arrived. No need for them to report that they had had a bad time! Their dead littered the ground and every whole man was helping a wounded comrade. They grinned through pallid faces at their successors and vanished slowly behind the ridge.

It was an unutterable relief to reach journey's end, however dangerous. After seven hours' arduous struggle, the last ounce of energy seemed drained from them. Sweat had made every one thirsty; they thought of nothing but drink and sleep. ‘The line,' they found, was nothing but a winding muddy ditch, never deep enough to shelter a man standing upright, wasting beneath the assaults of the rain, and utterly useless against accurate shelling. Crowding in eagerly enough, however, the new-comers crouched monkey-wise in the trench and lit battered cigarettes.

On that forward slope of the hill the view ahead covered several miles. Across the shallow valley they saw a dense line of trees, little shattered by shell-fire and in startling contrast to the desolation behind them. The pile of rubble that represented Les Bœufs lay immediately to their rear behind the crest of the ridge. Not far ahead patches of green appeared among the tumbled heaps of brown earth, and far away on the left was a church spire. This was Bapaume, the goal of all their hopes and the key to victory. With Bapaume fell Cambrai and Berlin itself, said the pundits, and fools believed them. They were thus on the edge of the wilderness, and there, apparently within reach, was a green world of grass and trees and villages. One desperate plunge forward and the quagmire would be left behind! But alas! not a step forward was possible without the guardian barrage, churning those green fields to a morass, smashing villages to mouldering ruins, obliterating the fair face of Nature. Thus the Allies dragged behind them an ever-lengthening trail of ruin, while the Germans retired ever to clean lands and uninterrupted roads. White cotton clusters of bursting shrapnel showed the position of the enemy's lines at the bottom of the valley; otherwise they were invisible, with never a sign of wire. It seemed an easy thing to walk down that gentle slope towards the trees, but there was abundant evidence that others had tried and failed.

By this time rain was falling heavily, and the trench was slimy, cold and sodden. Thanks to somebody's blunder, the men found themselves so crowded in their muddy ditch that they stood shoulder to shoulder, unable even to move. An unlucky shell in such circumstances is ruinous, and desperate messages were passed to the flanks. Stragglers in vain besought shelter, and, the shelling growing heavier, took cover in some blown-in dugouts immediately to the rear. These naturally opened towards the enemy, but yet afforded in their farthest recess a meagre shelter.

After a deal of shuffling and shifting, the men in the trench found elbow-room and settled down to the task of enlarging the ‘funk-holes.' These were the merest niches cut beneath the parapet, and afforded at best but an uncomfortable seat. Their strength lay in their moral value, which consisted in bringing the heads of tenants well below the skyline. They were utterly inadequate for protection against shells of the meanest calibre, but it is well known that even a blanket gives a grotesquely deceptive confidence. The blanket merely shuts out the sight of the barrage, but its solace is undoubted, and the ostrich justified. The line of the bombardment seemed to be towards the village some twenty yards behind the trench, and the shelling was undoubtedly growing heavier. A few shells even pitched short before the parapet and news arrived of several casualties. The trench had no traverses and the obtuse angles in the curves of it did little to localize the effect of direct hits. The whizz-bangs seemed to skim the parapets, and it was difficult to believe that a man could stand upright and save his head. At all events no one was disposed to try the experiment. Their sole comfort was that the softness of the ground provided frequent ‘duds.'