The Somme (7 page)

Thus, quarrelling, dozing, reading, and dozing again, the long hours dragged slowly towards the evening. No one visited them: every scrap of food and drink was gone: they were unable to raise even a cigarette between them. And, as Myers said, if the Angels of Mons should appear to him that moment, the only manna he would ask would be a ‘Woodbine.' One thing seemed to Everitt extraordinary. Not a Chaplain had he seen since he was wounded. This was notoriously out of keeping with tradition. Every one knew that no-man's-land during an attack swarmed with Chaplains, administering consolation spiritual and spirituous, and picking up Military Crosses like so many gooseberries. Everitt's experience of these men of God must have been exceptional, for he never saw one of them in front of reserve trenches, and associated them chiefly with Concert Parties and Church Parades. A gramophone was the sole social stock in trade of the Loamshire's Chaplain. He would deposit this instrument among the men's bivouac when they were out ‘resting,' and lounge near it, smiling foolishly while it blared brazen versions of ‘Roses are blooming in Picardy,' and ‘Colonel Bogie.' For the rest, he made an occasional point of asking men ‘how they were getting on,' and, receiving only colourless and embarrassed answers, retired with obvious relief to the more civilized shelter of the officers' mess. There at least he would find whisky and bridge and the conversation of educated men. On the not infrequent occasions when the Battalion's daily duties called it into unpleasant localities, the reverend and gallant gentleman was less in evidence. What he did no one seemed to know. Rumour declared he pressed the Colonel's trousers, but more probably he merely laid low like Br'er Rabbit. At long last he was trepanned by a fire-eating Colonel into a burial party in front of Ypres, and immediately afterwards returned to England for a prolonged rest. But doubtless Everitt's experience was exceptional and unfortunate.

In a traversed trench, where a man can never see ten yards in any direction, a new-comer must needs arrive without warning, and there now appeared with sufficiently dramatic suddenness a visitor more welcome than any number of chaplains or angels. This was Lieutenant Mackie, thin, pale, keen-eyed and sarcastic. A Distinguished Conduct Medal for once summarized the man who wore it. Only yesterday he had persisted in promenading the line while the shelling was hottest, scattering chaff on the tremblers in the trench below. Call this unnecessary, foolhardy; Gascon bravado; yet it was good to see and mightily heartening. It was this same Mackie who later lost his adjutancy by indulging, under the stimulus of rum, and clad only in pyjamas, in unseemly gestures on the parapet in the moonlight. But that is another story.

On this occasion he came as an angel of light. ‘How are you chaps getting on? Rough house, eh! You'll be out of it to-night; stretcher-bearers will be on the job soon after dark. Keep the home fires burning! So long.' You may say that this was theatrical, and self-consciously melodramatic, but it was the very thing to raise dashed spirits. Everitt had the grace to wallow in shame of his cowardice, and conversation flourished on the fertile theme of Mackie's adventures. Soon the stretcher-bearers returned with orders that all wounded must move a dozen bays down the trench towards the Riflemen. It seemed that the stretcher-party that night had appointed a rendezvous at a point where a track from the road crossed the trench, and there were further suggestions that the near neighbourhood of friends would prove desirable in certain unspecified eventualities. The hint was enough, and since Myers could walk, he was the first to leave. For twenty-four hours Everitt saw no more of him, and then only for a moment, but six months later they met again in their reserve battalion in England, where it was a terrible joy to live that day again in memory. To his friend's utter confusion and indignation Everitt ever afterwards regarded him as his preserver, and indeed it is hard to say how he could have reached the trench unaided. Such is the whirligig of war that Everitt's last news of him told of his elevation to the dignity of Assistant Town Major of Mons. At the same epoch Everitt had attained to the sole custody of a particularly foul incinerator.

One by one the men disappeared round the traverse, and soon it was Everitt's turn. There were no stretchers, and without them two men were unable to carry a third, but in any event the sharp angles of the trench would have made their use dangerous. First he attempted to crawl, and next he essayed hopping, but the clinging mud making this impossible, he made use of a nameless form of progress dependent on a foot and elbow wedged into the side of the trench. This at first answered better, but soon the banks of the ditch sloped outwards, and the wider space mocked his efforts. Also in places where the parapet was low, any such gymnastics involved exposure. His final plan was to sit down on the floor of the trench, facing his destination, and to work himself forward by a series of thrusts with his hands, the injured leg held stiffly aloft to avoid injury. The bearers followed slowly, lending ineffectual aid.

The procession must have made an amazing spectacle, but at the time the joke was hard to savour. The distance cannot have been more than a quarter of a mile, but, such was the exertion of these unusual acrobatics, that he reached journey's end utterly spent. Breathless and bathed in sweat, he seemed to spend hours in propelling himself round the muddy traverses, and, when at last he was suffered to rest, exhaustion left him for some time like a log.

The new stretch of trench was exactly like the other, and once more the little company settled down to wait for nightfall. The Rifles, it seemed, were only a few bays distant now, but none of them came near. By this time it was afternoon, and the stretcher-party was due at eight o'clock. Only another half-dozen hours!

The time dragged more and more heavily, but at dusk the monotony was rudely broken. Someone suggested that ‘the guns were waking up a bit,' and in less than five minutes the whole line was under heavy fire. Whizz-bangs skimmed the trench, sending down showers of earth as they scraped the parapet. The shells came with the sudden venom of lightning. It seemed to Everitt that Fate was playing with them, and that it was only in cruel caprice that they had been permitted to escape thus far. What was that ‘Cat and Mouse Act' at home? It has never been agreed whether the last turn of the rack consists in ‘going over' or holding out under a bombardment. Certainly the latter ordeal implies a greater helplessness, and on this occasion the victims could not even move a yard towards an imaginary shelter. Shrinking to the floor of the ditch, it was impossible to avoid visualizing the effect of a shell. All of them had had experience of a direct hit among closely packed men, and the sight is not to be easily forgotten. Everitt in particular ever held his most dreadful memory to be the appearance of a concrete block-house after a high explosive shell had actually passed through the door and exploded among six men. The walls were splashed with blood and brains, and the victims were torn to tatters of cloth and flesh that for a few minutes writhed dumbly in the smoke and dust of the explosion. And a weak will saw the sight again continually.

Soon some pessimist chose to ask what was the cause of the ‘bumping,' and at once everybody suspected it to be cover or preparation for an attack. Dusk is the plausible time for a raid, and they were miserably conscious of the empty trench on their left. Suppose the Germans reached it and bombed their way round the traverses towards the Rifles. Wounded men could expect little mercy in a hand-to-hand fight, and a blindly thrown grenade makes no discrimination. Unanimously they asked the stretcher-bearers whether they ought not to move nearer to the Rifles, and in their trepidation even suggested that some of the latter should occupy the unguarded trench. But their guardians were optimistic – ‘it's only an evening hate – you're safe as houses. Our boys are just round the corner. This bumping'll wash out in ten minutes.' In point of fact it did, but their fears were not entirely groundless.

With darkness the shelling slackened to desultory shooting from the howitzers, and their spirits rose as the shattering explosions moved slowly away to the rear. Followed the calm of night-time, rarely broken by the crack of a rifle, and lit always by the rising, hovering, falling radiance of the Verey lights. Excitement grew vivid as seven o'clock crawled towards eight. In less than an hour they would be actually on the way ‘out,' and the journey through the shelled line of communications might well be regarded as the last of their troubles. It would doubtless be a frying passage, but at least it would be progress towards a world where men walked upright and unafraid, where trees and houses stood unbroken, where there were other interests than death and wounds. Only thirty hours had passed since they had been wounded, but it seemed many days since they had seen a normal world. The thought that perhaps after all they might reach it again unloosed all tongues, and, perhaps to drown forebodings of that shelled track across the fields, every one fell to discussing their hopes of the base and Blighty. One man with a broken leg grinned appreciation of the congratulations of the others that he would spend Christmas in England. The less-fortunate less-injured men regarded him almost angrily as unjustly favoured, and secretly hoped that their wounds too would prove severe enough to reach the base at least. Someone said that the field-hospitals must needs be jammed with casualties from the Push and that the field-ambulances and Corps clearing-stations were used purely as evacuation-centres for all save desperate cases requiring instant operation. Here was the advantage of a ‘lively' front. On a quiet section all save what were euphemistically known as ‘long jobs' were retained in the net of the clearing-station, where the ample supply of beds made it possible to cure many a premature optimist. But in the crowded stream of a ‘Push,' the necessity of keeping the field-hospitals free from congestion was a golden key to the base, where the same good fortune sometimes worked further miracles. And to crown these rosy dreams came pat the stretcher-party.

In default of lowering the stretchers into the narrow trench, they were laid flat on the ground over against the edge of the parados, Everitt's turn came early. It was a grotesque performance, with one leg useless and a stiff arm, but in a breathless minute he had scrambled from the shadow of the trench into the moonlight. Lying flat upon the stretcher, a folded great-coat made a pillow. No one suggested delay, and forthwith the journey started. Even then Everitt was beginning to look upon it as a stage on the road to London.

The night was cool, and clear, with a brilliant moon and a multitude of stars. The Germans lay not half a mile away across perfectly open country, and it was well for the party to move as rapidly as possible. Four men carried the stretchers, but the maze of craters and the dazzle of the flares made the going irksome; moreover the weight of even the lightest man is a considerable load for four strong bearers. Progress was cruelly slow, and occasionally a man's stumbling tilted the stretcher until Everitt with difficulty kept himself from falling. It was an eerie sensation to be thus carried through the night. The guns gave tongue only intermittently, and the staccato crack of the rifles and machine-guns broke the uncanny silence but rarely. The other parties were lost in the night, and from a probably misplaced dread of being overheard, no one spoke above a whisper. Their language naturally was lurid, and what their curses lost in volume they gained in bitterness. Hoisted high upon the shoulders of-four men, Everitt felt himself tremendously conspicuous, and, in the radiance of the Verey lights, it seemed incredible that the whole party was not clearly visible. From his swaying platform nothing was to be seen save a dead world of desolation. It was easy to believe that he was asleep, and that this was the landscape of a fantastic dream.

In accordance with tradition, at every nearer flare the bearers remained motionless, sometimes erect in picturesque silhouette, more often lowering the stretcher, and passing the brief respite in whispered and comprehensive anathemas. Once a machine-gun seemed to fire directly at them, and the soft whizz of the bullets passed apparently close to their ears. It was impossible and perhaps superfluous to know how near the shots were passing, or to discover whether they were being deliberately fired upon, but it seemed best to lie motionless. Everitt, for one, was too badly scared to risk the feeblest remark, and yet he realized what a masterpiece Bairnsfather would have made of the occasion.

Then up again, with Everitt's consciousness of exposure tremendously strengthened! As they left the trench farther behind them, they reached the region of dropping bullets. Several times they took cover in holes, the stretcher tilting awkwardly in the tumbled earth, and twice Everitt was spilled outright as the men stooped too suddenly for shelter.

But, thanks to the moon, progress was far speedier than he had dared hope. At one point indeed they were held up in the shelter of a low ridge that seemed to be swept by machine-gun-fire coming from no one knew where, and, when at length they crossed it at a stumbling trot, he held his breath with strained ears. By good fortune they passed the place in safety, and perhaps his fears were largely imaginary. For some time Everitt lost his bearings with his courage, but in just under an hour the party reached some batteries of ‘eighteen pounders' which he remembered must be about half-way to the road. Here they met men of a relieving battalion ‘going up,' and, contrary to tradition, Everitt's account of the conditions ‘up there' was not encouraging. Certainly he was tired and frayed to distraction, but every reader of optimistic special correspondents knows that the wounded are ‘wonderfully cheerful.' Yet it seemed absurd to paint Les Bœufs as rather a joke, and perhaps an abortive attack conveys to its survivors on the whole rather the greyer side of war. At all events Everitt must needs let the newcomers know what they might expect up yonder, and he felt a hopeless pity for them when he heard they were to ‘have a cut at Hazy Trench to-morrow.'