How Dear Is Life (26 page)

*

A long thick row of glengarries above shoulders hunched over the rails hardly moved as the lessening garish lights began to slide round behind the wake of the transport. The order was given,
No
Smoking
. There were submarines about, it was murmured. Suddenly he saw that the officers were above them, leaning easily upon their rail. A breeze found their kilts, and he turned to go below, to see what the sleeping quarters were like.

There were none. There was a rusty iron deck, partly covered in. They dumped their accoutrements with others against the canvas-shrouded rails, then set out to look around the ship, to find out if there was any beer to be bought. He met Gerry, and was greatly relieved to see him. “How about a beer together?”

“No luck, young Phil. There’s cocoa in the galley aft, thr’pence a cup, a damned swizz. How ’rey’ feeling?”

“All right. How’s Bertie?”

“He’s on another boat, with the transport. See you later.”

From the dark little galley lit by an oil-lamp hot cups of thick cocoa were being passed out, to the chink of coins. Threepence, sheer robbery! However, it was warm and sweet, which was something.

They returned to the rails. As they were looking into the dark, without warning their eyes were hit almost painfully by blinding light, the searchlight beam lifted away, washing the waves before swinging back to light the funnels. And all the way down Southampton water to Spithead ship after ship at anchor in the roads saluted with long blasts on their steam-whistles, while searchlight after searchlight picked up the transport. It was exhilarating; it gave a feeling of England’s regard to the men standing in penumbral darkness, while over the short waves moved in succession trails of tinny light to whiten the rows of faces.

A last greeting came from the signal station on the hill above the East Foreland of the Isle of Wight. W-H-A-T S-H-I-P I-S
T-H-A-T spots and dashes of light spelt out in Morse. The answer from the bridge was met with another signal from the Isle, which Journend, one of the battalion signallers standing near spelled out G-O-O-D L-U-C-K. The entire battalion broke into cheering; cheer after cheer passed away into the night until the impulse was gone, and upon the darkened ship there fell a silence above the throb of engines, in the night spectral with waves breaking upon the receding shore of England.

*

Phillip had forgotten the nausea of the night when the transport hove to for the pilot outside Le Havre. As they moved nearer he saw upon the quays French sentries in red trousers and long blue coats with the ends turned up, carrying rifles with bayonets like the one he had bought at Murrage’s long ago. Word soon went round from the pilot that they were the first transport to arrive in the port after the evacuation caused by the Germans crossing the Marne. People and sentries on the quays were waving.

“I hear the Colonel’s orders are to report to the Director-General of Communications in Paris,” said Baldwin.

“Who told you, Norman?”

“Journend, in the Signallers. Only keep it to yourself.”

The news raised Phillip’s spirits, already calmed by what the newspaper which Baldwin had brought with him, said. The leading article stated that victory might be nearer than was supposed. The Germans in the East had been stopped by the Pripet Marshes; the Austrians had suffered a great defeat from the Russians, who had captured the fortress of Lemberg; and on the Marne and Aisne the enemy had lost many guns, and thousands of prisoners. He stood happily by the rail, in warm eastern sunshine bringing out the blues and pinks and greys of the houses of the town on the hillside.

They marched through narrow streets, led by pipers playing the
Marseillaise,
to
the
shrill
cheers of the populace. They marched on cobbles, in which lines of steam trams were laid. There were many halts, due to traffic. The street was hot, the air smelt of the grey drain-water trickling in the gutters. The women all looked fat and blowsy. Some wore wooden sabots. They had a grim look when their faces were not animated by obvious jokes as to what
les
écossaises
had under their skirts.

Flies were a nuisance. “They like the taste of British sweat, for a change,” said Collins.

They marched on, roaring out
It’s
a
long
way
to
Tipperary
. After three hours without a fall-out, and many checks, the battalion arrived at the top of the long hill leading to a field above the town, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. It was littered with paper and bottles. Here they were to spend the night. There were not enough tents, they were told they would have to sleep out. It was a dispiriting place, for no one was allowed to go into the town. But by trusting children beyond the wire with English silver, bottles of wine and long loaves of bread were to be obtained. Phillip gave a florin to a boy, but did not see him again.

In the morning the camp, which previously had been used by French troops, was cleaned by fatigue parties. Then the battalion marched down the hill again, to the Gare des Marchandises. Another long delay; more children sent off for wine and bread and chocolate. He tried again, and was lucky. A long loaf of bread, a bottle of red wine! And just in time, for grey-covered trucks on which
Hommes
40
Chevaux
8 (en longue)
was stencilled in white paint, came clonking and jerking past them, into the siding. A rumour faster than the train said they were for Paris. This was the life!

“I only hope we get a chance of a smack at the Germans before it is all over,” said Baldwin.

“Same here, old son!” replied Elliott.

Only half the battalion, under the Iron Colonel, boarded the train. This fact confirmed that they were for lines of communication.

Everything seen through the open spaces on either side of the moving truck was of keen interest. He kept telling himself, with secret thrills, that he was in France. He must send a postcard to Mr. Howlett. At 42 Wine Vaults Lane they would be preparing the Michaelmas renewal notices very soon now. Was Mr. Thistlethwaite, in top-hat and frock-coat, still coming into the office to talk to Mr. Hollis about the way he had been ill-treated by his old company? Had Downham got his commission yet, for home service? Did Mr. L. Dicks still smell of fish-and-chips, and Mr. J. Konigswinter look as though he ate only salt and pastry? What was Downham doing at that moment? He would be in clover, with twenty pounds every half-quarter paid by the Moon, in addition to his officer’s pay. He himself wasn’t doing so badly, a shilling and twopence a day, and office salary adding up all the time. Perhaps the war would last six months—he
hoped it would, anyway—and if he spent only his army pay he would have at the end of it enough to buy a second-hand motor-bike, and be able to turn up at the Old Heathians Fourth Footer matches on a N.U.T., or a B.A.T.!

The picture faded; the train, carrying the right-half battalion dragged its slow journey towards the night. After much stopping, and restarting, to melancholy little toots of the driver’s horn, it drew up at Villeneuve, a junction south of Paris. They were marched to billets in an empty school. Things didn’t look too good when a sentry was put on the door, and no one was allowed out.

In the morning, washing and shaving in an open yard before the usual burnt bacon and bread and tea for breakfast; and then they were marched to the junction of a hundred shining converging rails, above a revolting litter of tins, paper, faeces, where swarms of fat blue and green flies besieged their faces and necks for the salty sweat as they were told off into squads, each under a French
Sous-officier
,
to make orderly piles of rusty shells which had been tipped out of trucks all anyhow. It was hard work, for each shell weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds. They were painted with pale blue or yellow bands.

“Old stock, if you ask me,” said Baldwin. “Drop one, and the whole shoot might go up.”

“You volunteered for this, old son,” remarked Elliott, two of whose left-hand fingers had been crushed already. Elliott, a fairly quiet chap at Bleak Hill, seemed to have taken on the sardonic rôle of Mortimore, without Morty’s gaiety.

“Honest work never harmed anyone,” said Tommy Atkins, cheerfully. “And it’s helping to win the war.”

“In what way, old son?”

“That is not for us to say. The sooner we’ve done the job, the sooner we shall be free to stop.”

“You’ve got some hopes, old son.”

“I have hope, Elliott, and I have faith, two things that cannot be taken away,” replied Tommy Atkins, his apple-face glistening.

“And I have two purple fingernails, old son, so let’s call it quits.”

At the end of a week, just as they were getting into the way of handling the shells, they were sent to another siding, to unload French wounded who had come down from the Aisne, and carry them on stretchers to horse ambulances. They lay on straw in the
familiar grey trucks, some groaning, others deathly still. The stench was sickening; the straw was wet with urine and faeces; flies crawled on open wounds which ran with pus, or were slippery with twisting maggots. Eyes stared wild and fixed above the straw, hair and beards dishevelled; they muttered, groaned, sometimes screamed when being shifted on to stretchers. One man’s feet were splintered bone through broken boots; another’s arm was a bloody stump into which a brown bandage cut, twisted by a stick, the end of which he held dog-like in his teeth. The flesh of the shoulder was a blackish blue. A retching smell came from it. When accidentally he touched the soldier’s cheek, it felt sickly hot. The man’s head did not move.

“Dear man,” said Tommy Atkins. “He’s got gangrene. Or lockjaw. Don’t take it to heart, Maddison, help me get him on to the stretcher. Only God should be taken to heart.”

When the trucks had been cleared he had washed his hands; but still the smell remained. He tried to force himself not to sniff his fingers; but again and again the hand came up, and he had to swallow to stop himself from being sick.

“The French never were exactly famous for their sanitation,” said Baldwin. “Every well in Villeneuve, despite its name, is probably crawling with typhoid, and no wonder, when you see that there are no drains, or if there are any, they just empty out beside the wells.”

They had been forbidden to drink any water except that drawn from the water-cart, saturated with chloride of lime.

The medical officer, Captain McTaggart, organised a temporary hospital in a factory building closed since the war. Volunteers were called for orderlies. Tommy Atkins was the first to volunteer. Phillip and Baldwin preferred to work on the loading of trucks, the shells having all been stacked.

There was an odd bearded old soldier living in the yards, who called himself Mad Jack, with a row of dirty ribbons which he said were got in thirty years’ service. He appeared to have no unit, and tried to attach himself to the Highlanders, and get put on their nominal roll. Baldwin said he was probably a deserter and was playing mad, to avoid being shot when caught. Mad Jack did no work, he slept in a hay store, and played pitch-and-toss with anyone, including what he called the “’eathen French frogs”, for sous, to get red wine. Another practice of his was to pinch bully beef, and ‘fog’
it in the
buvettes
. Then one day
military policemen appeared in the yards; and Mad Jack was last seen crossing the tracks at a fast pace, a sack of stolen rations over his shoulder.

Upon an evening soon afterwards they all entrained for Orleans, where a railhead camp was being made for troops of the Lahore and Meerut Divisions, on their way from India.

After a week at Orleans he thought of himself and Baldwin as old sweats, a term learned from some regular soldiers who, having recovered from slight wounds, were there on light duty before being sent back to the front. The light duty was putting up tents in rows; digging latrines, and trenches for water pipes to fill canvas drinking troughs for horses; and erecting a barbed-wire fence around the camp.

After 5 p.m. each day they went into the town, having to report back at the guard tent at 9 p.m. They went to the Poisson d’Or for steaks and sliced potatoes, excellent with the local mustard, and red wine, twice a week; they were paid five francs every Friday, when their brown pay-books were initialled by Mr. Ogilby. Phillip had written half a dozen letters home, saying that no post had come to him so far, but he was well and enjoying himself, and the war would be over by Christmas.

   *

The swallows had gone from the reeds by the river; mists lay over the water at night; leaves broke from the trees. Fishermen stood on the bridge over the Loire unspeaking, their long poles before them. Sometimes one caught a very small fish, slightly bigger than a sardine. Was it a gudgeon, or a bleak? He did not really want to know. It was not an English river.

In the second week of October they read that the Germans had captured Antwerp. Many prisoners of the Naval Division, sent by Winston Churchill, had been captured. The Germans were losing thousands of men
in their mass attacks, but in spite of enormous losses, they were advancing. The old sweats in the camp were darkly pessimistic.

“The Ally-mands will be feeling the benefit of all we’re doing here,” said one. Some of them were court-martial cases, serving sentences often and twelve years’ hard labour for insubordination, the sentences to begin
after
the war. They were supervised by military policemen armed with revolvers—they did all the worst jobs, like emptying latrine buckets into wheeled carts. When they were fit for duty, they would be sent back up the line.

He was shocked to think that some of the heroes ol Mons could be treated like that. Ten years’ hard labour for answering back a sergeant! But all regular soldiers appeared to be treated harshly, quite differently from Territorials.

One night in the Poisson d’Or an old French soldier of
’
Soixante-dix
—the war of 1870—told them that Lille had fallen.
Les
sales
boches
were advancing, to the ports of
la
Manche.
Coupez
les
gorges!
he cried, drawing his finger across his throat, and pointing to the north.