A Fox Under My Cloak (35 page)

*

During four more nights cylinders were taken up in the same muffled wagons, and emplaced. On the 23rd of September a big fire broke out in Cité St. Pierre, within the German lines; vast drifting smoke filled half of the forward sky seen from the trenches, and at night the low clouds, (for the weather had broken) glowed a dull red. The work was completed that night, when all the discharging pipes had been carried to the
emplacements
, and laid on pegs driven into the parapet. It was hard, sweaty work, and slow, too, owing to the ten-foot lengths being most awkward to manipulate round the traverses, amidst oaths and curses among the numerous soldiers in both
communication
and front trenches.

The R.E. major came to Phillip, and taking him aside, said, “This is X night. Keep it to yourself, my boy.”

“Certainly, sir.”

A violent thunderstorm that night broke with lashing rain upon waterproof capes and chalk-bags, bringing great clogs of white slather upon boots; but the fire in Cité St. Pierre burned as
brightly as before, when the storm had gone away over the plain of the Scheldt.

By now he was fairly familiar with many of the officers and men of the infantry holding that section of the line farthest from the Germans, a little more than half a mile from a solitary tree visible just in front of the enemy wire, known as Lone Tree. As Phillip left one of the reserve infantry company’s dugout, happy with whiskey inside him, he felt he was enjoying the
adventure
, despite the falling rain. Thank God he would be able to sleep in a billet that night; and he was comparatively dry, in his Father’s mackintosh, which gave him an extra feeling of security.

“Twinkle” was to have hot soup and sandwiches ready at 3 a.m., when he got back. Before going to his billet, he saw that the N.C.O.s of his squad had their hot tea and rum, and canteens of skilly.

“Well, good night you chaps, have a good sleep, while you can.”

“Very good, sir,” replied the senior sergeant. “Beg pardon, sir, but have you any idea when the big push will start?”

“The wind is blowing from the west, sergeant, that is one thing; and listen to the guns, that is another. We shall know very soon, I think. Cheer-ho!”

The night was electric with white flash and orange-red bulging flame. Walls and roofs and shattered rafters along the meagre wet street were revealed in flash upon flash of field-gun batteries massed in the fields and lanes all around. To the south, above the wooded hills of Nôtre Dame de Lorette, the sky was fluttering and quivering as though filled with a thousand butterflies. He stood a while near the broken church, letting his sensations possess him entirely—the awfulness, the strangness, the majesty, the terrible beauty of it all—to which was added a feeling of secret relief that he would not be going over the top.

*

Morning came with drizzle and mist, the wind being from the south at noon. Hourly reports, during the past few days, had been sent in to Brigade H.Q., and transmitted back to Division, Corps, Army, and G.H.Q.

At ten o’clock in the morning of the 24th of September a
motor-cycle
despatch rider on a Triumph gave Phillip an envelope marked
Secret
,
for which he signed. Inside were orders for the
Special Companies, R.E. All ranks of the specially employed sections were to be in position by 7 p.m. on Y/Z night.

All officers i/c sections were to report at their respective Brigade H.Q. for instructions regarding zero hour. All
anti-gas
helmets were to be dipped in hyposulphite solution before leaving billets.

“At the moment,” said Phillip, to his senior sergeant, as he wetted his finger and held it up, “there is no wind at all. If we let off in present conditions, our own chaps will be gassed, and not the Germans. We are supposed to discharge for thirty-eight minutes, before a final two minutes of smoke. D’you know how long the German helmets last?”

“Fifteen minutes, sir.”

“How long will the hypo last on ours?”

The sergeant, an old soldier of Mons and Ypres, laughed shortly. “They don’t tell us that, sir.”

“Well, I’ve got to go to Noeux-les-Mines now, Sergeant Butler. I am leaving you in charge. If anyone asks for me, say I’ve gone to get some equipment from Dados. I’ll be back about two pip emma.”

“Very good, sir.”

Dados, he had recently learned, was short for Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Supplies. From listening to Captain West he had come to believe that the extraordinary silence of both the German guns and machine-guns might be due to a plan they had to attack, should the wind change, and the British be gassed by their cylinders. The jam-packed troops would be caught, unprepared for the defensive. From what he had seen and heard of the plan of attack, every infantryman had been given instruction, in training, to the smallest detail; and if the old Hun attacked, the whole thing would be a muck-up.

In his unsophisticated mind, his unawareness of the thoughts of others (except of the rank and file) Phillip wondered if he ought to tell the R.E. major of this possibility. Supposing the fire of the German artillery was being held back for a terrific bombardment in the event of the British gas blowing the wrong way? The gas would paralyse everyone in the deep and narrow chalk ditches: the German infantry would be able to come through the gaps which had been cut in the British wire. It would then be Second Ypres again, but this time not with the “devilish
German gas”. However, his experiences in his recent battalion at home had partly subdued him; so he suppressed his fears; and thinking of his own safety, decided to get himself a revolver from the ordnance stores. He could sign a chit for it, his pay would be debited.

D.A.D.O.S. was at Noeux-les-Mines, a couple of miles behind Mazingarbe. He got a lift on a lorry, and was soon there. To a remark by the quarter-master-sergeant at the store, as to whether or not he had lost his revolver in the line, he replied, “Yes. During some shelling”, which led to the information that by filling-in a claim form and signing it, he might get a refund. He left with a new Smith and Wesson .45, and fifty rounds of ammunition; and after a meal of steak and chips and red wine in an estaminet, got a lift back to Mazingarbe. No one had asked for him during his absence.

The wind was now from the south, and very slight. What if it were south on Z morning?

He went into an overgrown trench, part of an old system where mouldy pieces of French uniform and equipment, an occasional bone or red fez could be found, and set up a mark in the side of the trench directly opposite him, about eight yards away. He took aim and fired; and to his surprise the bullet returned by his head, almost hitting him. It must have bounced back almost exactly along the line of flight. What an escape! That was the fourth time he had been lucky, including the Spandau bullet in 1914 that had cut across his greatcoat. He decided to practice no more, and never again to fire directly at a solid object.

*

The R.E. major paid the section a visit in their billets at Mazingarbe. Afterwards, as the Major was about to climb into his car, Phillip asked him how long the detachment job was likely to last.

“Ah, I expect you are keen to get back to your regiment,” remarked the old soldier, genially. “Well, I can tell you that you will be required only for the morning of the assault, as far as I can foresee at present. Then you will, I suppose, be returned to your regiment.”

Ominous words. Saluting the major, Phillip fought the feelings twisting within himself.

At twilight the wind was moving, almost imperceptibly, from
S.E., and E.S.E. It was moving, where it moved at all, up the lines of trenches, and, in places, aslant from the German lines.

*

The strange silence of the German batteries was still being maintained on the afternoon before the attack. No rifle fire from the unseen trenches came across the dry yellow grasses, with their occasional patches of wildered cabbage plants. At twilight Phillip left with his section, carrying the two kinds of spanners, one to tighten the nuts of the jet tube, the other to turn on the gas. There was a time-table for each infantry unit taking part in the assault: when to leave billets, when to enter a named UP communication trench, when to be in a further named
assembly-or
jumping-off trench. Nearby a quarter of a million British and French infantrymen of twenty-six divisions were on the move under the dull rainy sky of Artois, moving along narrow roads and lanes, and tracks of chalky mud gleaming with the dilating pallor of the sky: British infantrymen, in khaki, French in the new
bleu
invisible
,
replacing the red trousers worn in earlier battles to serve as aiming-marks of their own field-gunners; while south of this minor battlefield, in the Champagne Pouilleuse, a further three hundred thousand men of thirty-six French divisions were moving into their positions for the major attack.

P
HILLIP
and his section struggled through the new and unrevetted UP communication trench, in places up to their knees in white pug, and eventually reached their positions; and then, trying to loosen the domes of the cylinders, which was to have been done at the railway-siding until the general stopped it, found that neither of the two kinds of spanners “dished out” to them would shift the nuts. What should he do? He was in a state of fear and acute anxiety, afraid to telephone to brigade lest he be reprimanded; afraid to go back to the R.E. dump, lest he be reported absent from his post.

Shortly afterwards, to his relief, Captain West’s company filed into the forward trench, covered with wet chalk from the UP communication trench.

“I’m awfully sorry to bother you, Captain West, but have you a large screw-wrench, by any chance?”

“What the hell d’you think I am, a damned ironmonger?” shouted Captain West in sudden rage. “Are you so bloody inefficient that you, with damn-all to do for the last few days, have to depend on the poor bloody infantry to provide you with the tools of your poisonous trade?”

Phillip saw in the light of the candle stuck on the table of piled ration boxes in the shelter that Captain West’s pale, high forehead had beads of sweat on it, while the line of his jaw was ferociously set.

“I can’t help it, the spanners dished out to me——”

“If you don’t bloody well shut up, I’ll put a bullet through you!” retorted the other, now whispering tense. “How dare you, one of the original nineteen fourteen army, and more-over a soldier of the Gaultshires, how in hell dare you stand there and talk to me as though you had not already sized up the whole bloody war, the real war, the
only
war, which is between the infantry and the staff, who sit on their bottoms and collect all the gongs with their hampers from Fortnum and Mason’s before issuing reams and reams of bumff—orders and counter-orders—modifications and alterations—thus making a complete balls-up of every battle since you fellows’ marvellous defence of Ypres against the flower of the German Army!
Then
Sir John French left the work of fighting, which is
their
job, to local commanders—God’s teeth, don’t you look at me like that, young Phillip, or I’ll have you reduced to the ranks! I would probably make a worse balls-up of things if I were on the staff! Help yourself to a spot of old man whiskey, for Christ’s sake—and stop talking!”

Captain West grabbed a pile of paper memoranda and threw it up into the air, then took an enamel mug off its hook—a bayonet thrust into the chalk wall—and pushed it, with the bottle, across to Phillip. “Help yourself. Knock it back! Then pass me the mug.”

Phillip swallowed, making a wry face; he returned the mug. Captain West poured a stiff peg, and tipped it down his throat; then to Phillip’s amazement, he helped himself to more.

“It isn’t my fault, Captain West——” began Phillip.

“Call me Westy,” said the other, staring intently across the table. “And most certainly it
is
your fault, Phillip. What if the general did tell you to leave well alone, it was still up to you to see that you had the right spanners!
You
were in
command
,
not
the general! Anyway, ‘Never explain, never
apologise
’—that’s the only attitude. You’ve heard of Jacky Fisher? You haven’t? Where were you educated?” Phillip lowered his eyes; and Captain West, seeing this, said immediately, “Well, the Services’ world is a narrow one, of course. Jacky Fisher practically made the navy what it is today, and all the way he was up
against
people like that general who said Nay to a better man’s Yea at rail-head. Have you read Nietzsche? The most misunderstood and misquoted philosopher of our time? Anyway, I hope I have now made myself clear, you blue-eyed wonder, in the matter of personal responsibility?”

“I think I see what you mean, Westy.”

“You think you do, do you? Well, that is something. The next step from thinking is doing. Now, I’ll answer
your
question. No, we haven’t got a screw-wrench, as you call a
monkey-spanner
. But if you don’t want a court-martial, I’d advise you to get hold of the right spanners. Don’t ask me how. It’s your job to find out. I’m not your blasted bear-leader, even if you were at First Ypres!”

While Captain West was speaking, Phillip had thought at first that he was joking; then, seeing the sweat on his forehead, as though forced through the skin by the violence of thought, he had felt over-awed. This was followed by the fearful thought that, if the cylinders in his fourteen emplacements could not be unscrewed, causing untold losses, he would be court-martialled … and perhaps suffer the death-penalty.

There was no time to be lost. He hurried through the damp gas-blanket of the shelter, and sent his runner, waiting outside, to bring the senior sergeant, a regular of the Royal Engineers, to him. The old soldier was reassuring.

“I’ve already sent a corporal to borrow some from the next sector, sir. ’E’s gone over the bags, it’s ’opeless to try and get along the communication trenches now. ’E knows where to go, and said ’e can find Mr. White’s dugout with ’is eyes shut. Lieutenant White had the same trouble, sir, but ’e won some adjustable spanners from the A.S.C. as soon as ’e saw as ’ow the ones dished out wouldn’t fit.”

“But they were only issued yesterday, sergeant.”

“True enough, sir, but Mr. White come up ’isself and made sure, ’aving observed as ’ow the spanner they give us in the
railway
siding was different to both the issue spanners. The ones they give us yesterday are for to connect the stiff jet pipes and the armoured copper flexibles, sir.”

“What shall we do if the corporal can’t find Mr. White in all this muck-up?”

Phillip had to shout, for sudden flights of shells were now racing overhead, following almost continuous double-cracks of sixty-pounder batteries behind the ruined
corons
of Le Rutoire. “It’s that general’s fault—I wonder who he was?”

“Someone from corps—black-and-red brassard, sir.”

Phillip felt panic, remembering that he had orders to report at brigade headquarters, a little over half a mile behind the front line, at ten o’clock; and it was now 8 p.m.

“Well, carry on, Sergeant.”

“Very good, sir.”

He hurried back to Captain West’s shelter, and peering round the blanket, asked if he might come in, to be greeted by the inevitable, “Just in time for a spot of old man whiskey.”

He was too agitated to think of drinking. Captain West reassured him.

“The wind is so slight that in all probability you won’t have to let off your beastly gas. We, the infantry, have a double set of orders—one for use with gas, the other without gas—if one excepts, I need hardly add, the inevitable hot air, itself a kind of poison gas, from the staff. Anyway, you can’t help by
worrying
. Your corporal has gone to get long spanners. Help yourself.” He pushed over the bottle. “Wait here until my subalterns, who are seeing that the men have their hot soup, come here in”—he looked at his watch—“half an hour’s time, at eight-thirty pip emma. What about your men’s rations? Have you thought of that, blast your eyes? God damn it, am I your bear-leader?”

“They’ve got haversack rations, for tonight and tomorrow, in addition to their iron rations, Captain West.”

“I told you to call me Westy! God’s teeth, don’t you ever obey an order?”

“Now and then,” said Phillip, feeling sudden elation.

“To you, as a 1914 soldier, I am ‘Westy’. Go steady with old man whiskey, for you’ve got to see the brigadier tonight.
Everything will come all right, which means that nothing ever goes according to plan. God’s teeth, what’s that blasted row on top? The bloody rats are getting as big as elephants! They’re fat as cats, after feeding all the summer on the French stiffies lying out in front since last May.”

The bumping about on the chalk-bags above the corrugated iron roof ended with the thud of someone jumping; then a face looked in past the blanket, and a broad Scottish voice asked if anyone knew where the adjutant of the 7th King’s Own Scottish Borderers was. The face was invited in, and became the captain of a company which had been lost on the way up. The visitor explained that the marching column had been split, two files on either side of the road, to allow wheeled transport to pass in the middle; and when the Hun had started strafing, they had left the road. The big, dark-haired Scotsman was too anxious to accept a drink. He belonged to the fifteenth division, to the New Kitchener’s Army. The guide had hopelessly lost direction; they had come across many communication and assembly trenches. His men were waiting.

“You’re on the right of us,” said Captain West. He opened a map, and spread it. “There’s your divisional boundary, two hundred yards from the crossing of the tracks to Lone Tree and this one into Loos. There’s a gap in the line here”—he pointed—“and the left flank of your division rests on this other track, also to Loos, approximately five hundred yards due south. It’s less than three hundred yards from the Old Hun, so don’t let your hearties start singing Roamin’ in the Gloamin’, or you’ll start the whole Brock’s Benefit prematurely, and our blue-eyed boy here hasn’t got his little spanner yet. Now for a wee Doch an’ Dorris!” He got up, handed the newcomer his mug, said “Knock that back,” went to the blanket, called out, “Runner!”, returned, and said, “I can give you a guide—he comes from Dunstable, and knows this kind of chalk country; besides, I get my liquor at night the way I am going to send you, so you should have no difficulty in following the winding tracks of myself and porters. Here’s your guide. Au revoir, and the very best to you and your bonny lads. Good night!” and rising, with grave courtesy, the pale captain opened the curtain for the other to leave. The K.O.S.B. captain, new of uniform and equipment, his eyes constantly returning to the ribbon on the other’s tunic, was equally formal in his thanks.

“Where would we be,” said Captain West, when the kilted figure had gone, “if we hadn’t got a navy?” He helped himself to half a mugful of whiskey.

*

Phillip saw another aspect of what he thought of as the most extraordinary men he had ever met during the candle-lit dinner in the shelter. Captain West had told him that he was a schoolmaster at a preparatory school before the war, what he called an usher. “It was there that I earned the loathed appellation of ‘Spectre’.” He had been up at Oxford with the Prince of Wales, whom he spoke of as the “Pragger Wagger”. Captain West at mess-dinner was quiet and friendly; he ranted no more about the staff; the coming attack was not mentioned. He talked of cricket, in the Duke’s Deer Park, in the early months of the war; of partridge drives over the Duke’s property, with more than a hundred beaters, and all the game going to the county hospital, for wounded soldiers; and how the Duke made it his business to visit every man of the Gaultshires back from the front, in that hospital; how he had provided money for the wives and dependents of men called up at the outbreak of war, entirely out of his own purse. How in those early days he himself had been sent, senior subaltern of the third or militia
battalion
at the depöt, to command a company of one of the new service battalions encamped in the Duke’s park; how the Duke provided most of the food for the entire battalion—grouse, beef, mutton, venison —and made it his business to know the name of every officer and man under him, and details of his family, too. One day there was what the Duke called a grand charge of the entire battalion of companies in line, led by the Duke on his famous Arab stallion (which before the war was sent to serve one approved mare for every officer of the Gaultshire Yeomanry)—the Duke, sword flashing aloft, crying in a loud voice, “Men of the Gaultshires! Let loose the dogs of war!” and, said Captain West, sitting back with a mock grin look, “Every one of the camp dogs gave tongue exactly a moment afterwards, and led the charge! They knew his Grace’s ways as well as anyone!”

Before they left for France, he went on to say, every officer was presented with a pair of field-glasses. The Duchess, too, made it her job to go round and visit the wives of the rank and file, in their cottages, to see that they lacked nothing.

“And that!” said Captain West, holding his mug of whiskey
at arm’s length, and regarding the solitary candle through
half-closed
lids, “is Good Eggery. That is the minimum that one expects from an Englishman with responsibilities going with high station. Gentlemen,” he said, half-standing up, “I give you the King, coupled with the Pragger Wagger!”

They drank; then Captain West said, after a glance at his wristlet watch, “The Duke, coupled with the name of his lady wife, the Duchess.”

Phillip saw the sweat on the pale domed brow glinting once more; noticed the clenched muscles of the jaw locked tight. The servant cleared the enamel plates; then put upon the table a cubic foot of black cloth, which, on being opened, revealed the nickel-plated enclosed horn of a Decca trench gramophone. “Not now, Boon,” Phillip heard Westy mutter, his jaw muscles setting and unsetting. Immediately he changed his mind. “Put on the duet from Tonight’s the Night.” Then in the
momentary
silence in the shelter before the needle was put on the disc he said, “My word, the French are going it down south! Listen!”

The air was shaking; Phillip could feel a trembling under his feet, and through the chalk walls of the shelter. Gunfire beat in muffled waves upon the hanging door-blanket; the two
candle-flames
were quivering nervously. Upon this undertone of the earth’s rumbling the sweet and tinny voices of the gay London night came from the open lid, heard by the heads held towards it.