A Fox Under My Cloak (38 page)

“Of course, naturally. I'm going back to my Number One emplacement now, and shall be in telephonic communication with brigade, and will send word if the plans are changed. Meanwhile, unless you hear from me, you will carry on with the time-table I've given you.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I'll be round to see you again, in any case, before the boys go over.” He turned to go back.

“Sir!”

“Yes?”

“The infantry's talking of the wire not being cut, I mean the jerry wire, sir, along by the Lone Tree. I thought I'd tell you, sir, just in case——”

“That's been taken care of, Sergeant. I was at brigade when the report came through, an hour or two back, and the gunners will attend to it.”

“Very good, sir. Is there any harm in telling the boys?”

Phillip hesitated. Then, remembering what Westy had said to him, “Rather not. See you later, Sergeant.”

*

By 5 a.m. it was growing light. General Sir Douglas Haig walked outside his château, into what was almost a calm. With him was his senior A.D.C.

“Light a cigarette, will you, Fletcher.”

The smoke drifted in little puffs towards the north-east. The two men stood still. The commander of the first Army did not speak; his aide kept the cigarette down, while holding himself in pliant immobility, emptying himself of thought, lest he disturb the general.

At 9.20 p.m. on the previous evening Sir Douglas Haig had ordered the general offensive with gas confidently; but owing to possible variance of the wind, staff officers of corps had been ordered to wait by their telephones to receive instructions. Without gas, owing to the insufficiency of heavy artillery, the attack would suffer heavy losses, and had small hope of success; furthermore, the enemy, from his superior observation posts in pit-head tower and spoil-heap, would be able to direct devastating gun-fire on troops massed in the front trenches, and in crowded communication trenches, if an attempt was made to withdraw the infantry of the four divisions not required for the limited alternative attack.

A few minutes after 5 a.m. the wind began to move slightly. At 5.15 a.m. General Haig gave the order to carry on, and then climbed to the top of his wooden look-out tower, to think alone. While time passed slowly as the wind he began to fear that the gas would hang about the British trenches. He bore himself up under the grave responsibility with the aid of prayer for guidance, a man seeking clarity within his own soul.

While he stood there one of his staff telephoned to the
commander
of the First Corps. When Lieutenant-General Gough replied, he asked, “Is it possible to stop the arrangements for the attack, General?”

“The gas is due to be turned on within half an hour,” said General Gough. “I do not consider it practicable to get word in time to the front trenches and to all the batteries concerned. Therefore, I am of the opinion that it is now too late to cancel the arrangements for the attack.”

By 5.40 a.m. the First Army commander felt a less heavy weight upon his spirit, when a slight breeze sprang up and rustled the poplar leaves in the green country behind the coal-fields. But a weight remained on his mind; for he had no immediate reserves to exploit a break-through should this happen in the morning. He had asked for the reserve divisions to be put in his immediate rear as soon as the assault took place; but to all his requests Field-marshal Sir John French had replied that he would keep
the general reserve for the battle under his personal command, and await events before ordering them to move forward.

With the exception of the Guards Division, and the Cavalry Corps, the divisions of the general reserve were all untried troops, who had only recently arrived in France from England. The field-marshal had several reasons for keeping them back; Sir Douglas Haig knew only one reason why they should be well-up at the moment of assault.

*

Behind the trenches, artillery observers sitting in their
sandbagged
posts were waiting, in calm excitement, headphones to ears. The battery commanders had received orders to be
prepared
to move out of their pits at the shortest possible notice.

Along the British line all was quiet; but from the south, from behind the ridge of Nôtre Dame de Lorette came the subdued deep roar with flickers as of distant lightning where the French had been fighting round Souchez and the strong German redoubt of the Labyrinthe continuously for the past week.

The gunners were now standing-to, in the gun-pits of batteries pointing into the whitening east: the great howitzers with blunt barrels rising steeply up; the long and comparatively slender high-velocity guns; the eighteen-pounder field-guns with their horses picketed a couple of hundred yards in the rear, waiting to hook-in and go forward over the prepared wooden bridges. Thousands of gunner-officers were imagining, again and again, the thrilling order of
Hook
your
lanyards
!
,
then
Fire
!
as slowly the hands of watches passed the half-hour mark, and crept to the three-quarter-hour mark, and the small ticking behind luminous dials became heart-beats thumping in ears.

*

Captain West's company headquarters was alive when Phillip returned. Equipped for battle, bombs hung on webbing braces, revolvers oiled, gas-masks rolled on heads under shapeless trench-caps from which badges were removed, platoon
commanders
were taking last looks at their maps. Their runners stood outside, holding yellow flags on sticks, to mark the
boundaries
of the advance for the artillery observers hidden up
chimneys
, in house lofts, and on haystacks behind the series of chalk seams cut in the level-seeming pan between the groups of
fosses
or
puits
held by the British and those on higher ground occupied by the Germans.

Ladders were in position, to scale parapets; the new Lewis gun-teams held fast to their hollow black weapons.

Boon the servant brought hot mugs of tea. Shakily the captain poured whiskey into each. Then he sat down suddenly, as though hit, on the edge of his wire-net bed. From there he lit a second candle, putting it in front of the alarm clock now upright on the table. As the flame rose up, Time became his enemy. He put the clock between him and the stump, complaining, “God's teeth, that blasted light stabs my eyeballs.” He gulped the contents of his mug. “This tea is cold, dammit.” Then, “What's the time?”

“Four minutes to go, skipper.”

Captain West sprang off the bed, and touching Phillip on the shoulder said quietly, “Come with me.”

Phillip followed him through the blanket, damp with liquid from the Vermorel sprayer, and out past men standing up in a sickly light, ominous with rain that hung everywhere in threat above the dead-white parapet. Some were smoking; a few talking; but all were silent as they watched the two officers climbing two scaling ladders, placed side by side, to look out over the dreaded top.

“No wind,” said Captain West. “Do you agree?”

“Yes, I do.”

They got down the ladders.

“Ring up Brigade. Ask for the general. Tell him I have
ordered
you not to turn on the gas.”

They returned past the silent faces, and entered the shelter. There in the same silence filled with a quaking sense of doom Phillip took the telephone and spoke to the general, saying, as he tried to keep his voice firm, “I am unable to carry on with the time-table, sir. I don't trust the wind, sir.”

A remote, impersonal voice replied, “I've already spoken to Division about the wind being unsuitable, and received a direct order to carry on. Therefore you will release your gas according to your orders. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Faces were looking at him. He was about to speak when the candle flames fluttered and went out, as in fright before a
concentration
of heavy buffets that shook pieces of chalk out of the walls and caused all the men within to flinch. When the blanket was drawn back Phillip saw the forms and faces of men holding
rifles, the scaling ladders, the wrinkled parapet line of
chalk-bags
in the rain as a scene in one of the scratchy flickering early bioscope films at the Electric Palace.

It was the intensive bombardment before the assault. It was 5.50 a.m. on the 25th of September 1915. The battle of Loos had begun.

T
HE
gas was already rising into the air and forming into a rolling grey cloud. Showers of small chalk fell among the waiting men. The top layer of hessian bags on the parapet was breaking, lifting ragged ears to the dull sky. Through the rolling thunder of the bombardment could be heard a shearing-of-glass noise, as the air above the trench was torn across by machine-gun bullets. Distant rockets soared and broke into colours; down fell the German shells. The waiting men crouched.

Away to the north a big mushroom of dark smoke hung in the sky, above a blown mine. In places along the German lines fires were being lit, to dissipate the gas which was moving slowly towards them. It seemed to be hanging about in No Man’s Land, eddying.

Followed by four runners, Phillip pushed his way down the trench, to visit his emplacements. Shrapnel was cracking above; men were being hit. In all the first four emplacements some connecting pipes were broken, and gas had come into the trench. The sergeants in charge had turned off the flow. Smoke candles were billowing away. He felt he could get no farther: he told the runners to tell their respective sergeants to use smoke only, rather than let their own men be gassed. When they had gone he put on his smoke helmet, and soon felt an almost insufferable heat. The eye-pieces misted over with sweat; he could hardly breathe; he stood as nearly upright as he dared, remembering that chlorine was heavier than air.

Some of the infantry lifted the bottom edge of their helmets to get a breath of fresh air. He saw, as from undersea, several figures doubling up, staggering about retching, wrenching
off helmets and clutching at the air. They made movement in the trench almost impossible.

Phillip looked at his watch, but it was invisible. He must wipe the eye-piece of his good eye. Holding his breath, he felt up from the end of the grey cloth tucked under his tunic. It was a desperate movement, made with the right hand while with his left he clutched the damp cloth round his neck to stop any gas coming in. It felt as though his right hand were trying to fight his left, the guardian hand. If it did let in gas, there would be no escape out of the trench. The top bags of the parapet were now in rags as machine-gun bullets struck them.

Smoke from the candles poured into the trench. This was not deadly, like chlorine, but it made breathing most heavy.

He tried to get back to Captain West’s shelter. He would be able to see the face of the alarm clock. While he was shoving his way forward, there was a change in the muddle of the trench; men were forming into some sort of line about the scaling ladders. The smoke having drifted a little, he could see through the eye-pieces that bayonets were already fixed. He got back in time to see the first wave of the Gaultshires climbing up the
ladders
. It was zero plus forty minutes. One of them appeared to slip. He fell back into the trench. Others pushed past him. All were wearing pulled-down smoke helmets. The helmet of the man who had slipped was torn. He lay in the trench, in an attitude of relaxation, while the helmet trickled blood.

More waves of attackers were coming from behind, up the communication trenches. Near the entrance to the fire-trench they began to cough and choke. Those who could do so, climbed out, and hurried along behind the parados, trying to find the crossing bridges. There was some confusion, as the trench was under fire; but somehow they got across, extended, advanced; and one by one dropped out of the advance.

*

From where he was standing behind the parados of the trench, under a continuous screaming of eighteen-pounder shells passing, it seemed, just over his short-hairs, Phillip could see pale-yellow grasses stretching away in front of him to the crest behind which lay the concealed German lines; but now all between sky and grass was hidden in smoke and gas. Into the hanging fog, in twos and threes and fours, shells were bursting. The waves of advancing men were disappearing in the smoky drag of the
horizon. He thought that to call them waves was the opposite of what they were; the waves were against them, throwing up black spray, surging over little figures like specks of jetsam.

A continuous flight of bullets was passing, most of them whipping the air, but a few striking the ground and whining away as they spun over and over. As he watched a voice shouted in his ear, “Your blasted gas has done enough damage already, and I don’t want you on my conscience as well, so get down, damn your eyes.”

Phillip got down; but Captain West, now marble-calm, stood as before and focused his field glasses upon the advance.

*

The German first line, curtained by their own protective fire, was not in view from where Captain West was observing; it lay just behind the turn-over of the imperceptible slope, marked by a stark and solitary tree near the wire-belt concealed by the grass. This front line, on the reverse slope, was connected
laterally
with the Loos Road Redoubt on Hill 69. The Redoubt was a massive work, the centre one of three dominating the British positions, with the Hohenzollern to the north and Hill 70 to the south. There were many steel cupolas, with splayed slits for machine-gun fire, a few inches above ground level, each so placed that it could enfilade attacking troops at a distance; and the German machine-gunners were equipped with oxygen masks. The German defensive system of cross-fire was designed to strike attacking waves sideways on; and as Captain West watched, he saw men falling like stalks in the sweep of a scythe.

The Loos Road Redoubt was the objective of the brigade of which the Gaultshires was the leading battalion. Its garrison had been safe from heavy shell-fire in dugouts twelve metres underground; now it was protected in fire-trenches revetted with stakes and faggots, made with firing-steps well above a deeper trench which provided a passing place as well as shelter from shrapnel. The deepness of such shelter was its security from shells and bullets; but that very deepness, filled by asphyxiating gas heavier than air, would be as the deepness of a grave.

The Loos Road Redoubt, from where Captain West stood, was visible only as a skyline above the slightest of rises in the down-like landscape. It was sixty-nine metres above sea-level; the British front line, where the gas was still eddying in places, was between forty and forty-five metres.

The wounded and gassed began to totter, crawl, and drag themselves back through the sere grasses, some helped by others, but this was rare; most of them struggled alone, desperate for safety, for water, for rest. Nothing could be done for them; there were too many; the first-aid post had been blown in, the doctor and his corporals killed. Some got over the trench bridges; others fell in, and writhed about, gurgling and retching in chlorine which lay there stagnant. The Vermorel sprayers had used all their liquid.

The crackle of rifle-fire came undiminished from over the grassy battlefield pocked by white craters of chalk, and strewn with figures in khaki, their heads defaced by grey masks set with circular goggles, with little rubber beaks or mouths giving them an appearance of miming in death to the hammering of machine-guns, the rending of shells, and the crackle of rifle-fire that told its own tale of what had happened to the Gaultshires and their sister battalions in the brigade.

To Captain West, ordered to remain behind during the first assault, it was happening to himself. He longed to rush upon the wire. Indifferent to the whip and hiss of bullets passing over, he continued to stand on the parados, and, looking up, Phillip saw his face working with curses.

Phillip stood up. Unknown to him, the effect of his presence upon “Spectre” West was calming. Phillip felt no fear. He was a mere spectator; he had no part in what was happening. He was free.

“We should be getting a message back soon,” said Captain West, sitting down. “When are you taking your section away? Here, get behind the parados. I told you before, I do not want to have you on my hands——”

“They’ve gone. I sent them back under the senior sergeant.”

“What were your orders?”

“I ordered myself. I said I’d follow on later. I want to see what happens.”

Captain West focused his glasses to search the ground to the south, towards Loos and the Double Crassier just perceptible in the mist and smoke. “If I apply for you, will you join my company?”

So far Phillip had put away the thought of rejoining the
infantry
; the direct question came as a shock. Before he could think what to reply, the company sergeant major came up to
Captain West and said, “Runner coming, sir. Looks like Croot, sir.”

The runner came limping towards them. His boots were clogged with loam and grasses, his puttees balled with mud, his trousers ragged. He carried his smoke-helmet in one hand. His face was red, his hair matted with sweat. He picked his way over a wooden bridge, took a crumpled sheet of message paper from his pocket, and gave it to Captain West. While Captain West was reading it, the orderly spoke to the C.S.M. in a high, hoarse, wheezing voice. The boys were lying before the wire. Many had fallen down on the way, owing to gas. They were in the grass. The shell-holes were full of gas. Stretcher-bearers were wanted. He showed a small hole in the back of one trouser leg, where a shrapnel ball had gone into his thigh.

“Well, you’ve got the blighty one you wanted, Croot.”

“Yes, Major, but the boys——”

“We’ll take care of them. Now, my lad, you look after Number One now. That’s your way!” The C.S.M. pointed to a
communication
trench marked
Walking
Wounded
Only.

*

Captain West spoke on the telephone to Colonel Mowbray. After giving his report, he seemed to be listening for a long while. Phillip was transfixed with fear at the thought of being ordered immediately to join the battalion. At last he heard Captain West say, “They should soon be in a position to pinch off the Hun opposite, Colonel.” Then, “Yes, Colonel. I’ll come now. Yes, I’ll bring Maddison with me.”

Putting down the instrument, Captain West said to Phillip, “Those damned fornicating idiots on the staff! They do not even listen to one of the finest surviving regular soldiers of the original British Expeditionary Force, Edward Mowbray! Their minds are paper, paper, paper! They stare at maps, they stick in their little pins with flags on them, and that is all a battalion means to them! They’ve never been stopped by barbed-wire, unless it was the wire outside a prisoners’ cage! They can think only frontally, from staring at reams and reams of their own bumff! They have now ordered us to make another frontal attack on uncut wire! Do you realise what I am saying? Then what in Christ’s name are you grinning at?” yelled Captain West, his face contorted, a thin white lather working in the
corners of his mouth. “Take that grin off your face, and listen to me, you horrible gas-merchant! The London Division is over there.” He stabbed the air towards the Double Crassier. “They are on the extreme right. They have got into the Hun front line with little opposition, but have had to stop to make a defensive flank, because the French next to them haven’t started yet. Don’t ask me why! They have not yet started! That is a fact! So the Londoners’ advance is stopped; while the Scottish Division next to us are going strong towards Loos. Their left flank is exposed, because we are held up. On
our
left flank”—Captain West’s voice was now less strident—“on
our
left flank the First Brigade has got through both fire and support trenches of the Hun first position, and the leading troops when last seen were crossing the Loos-Haisnes road. So their right flank is exposed, because our fellows, or what is left of them, are lying down before belts of uncut wire. That is the situation. The Hun position behind Lone Tree is threatened on both flanks. So what does the staff order? Shall I tell you?” screamed Captain West, above the screaming of
eighteen-pounder
shells. “The staff has ordered a second frontal attack against uncut wire! Does that, or does that not, strike you as the quintessence of criminal stupidity? Well? Well? Say something!”

Phillip did not know what to say.

“God’s teeth, I thought you had brains!” went on Captain West, contemptuously, the froth working in the corners of his mouth. “Look at this!” He flung open his map, knelt down to spread it on the ground, and pressed it with a finger as he cried, “Here is Lone Tree. And here”—the finger shook on the
linen-backed
, squared paper—“is where the First Brigade is now, just about to outflank Lone Tree to the north. And here”—another prod—“is where the Jocks on our right have got to. Yet here”—driving his finger through the map into the loamy clay
underneath
—“is where we are ordered to attack the same uncut wire frontally! And this in modern war—not in the Crimea!”

The C.S.M., lying a few yards away, grinned at Phillip, as much as to say that he knew the captain of old, and there was nothing to be done about anything anyway. Phillip said, “Surely the reserves should follow the First Brigade and get round behind Lone Tree? Why, as a Boy Scout I learned that!”

“The staff,” said Captain West, “have never been Boy
Scouts. They know everything except nothing. Now come with me.” To his batman he said, “Fill my water-bottle with the remains of the Johnny Walker, Boon—and
no
chlorinated water this time.” Then to Phillip, “Come with me to the colonel.”

*

Outside a dugout among the lines of chalk-white trenches stood Colonel Mowbray with his adjutant and R.S.M. The colonel wore a trench-coat concealing his rank. With his walking-stick and air of authority the massive deliberate figure looked like a country gentleman with his steward come to inspect part of his estate. Phillip saluted, and the feeling of awe before the colonel’s massiveness vanished when the big red face became kindly with a smile, and “Good morning!” said the colonel. The words, spoken with the charm of an open face, made Phillip feel happier, yet with a certain nervousness that he did not deserve to be treated as a proper officer. He moved away a few paces, in case the colonel wanted to speak to Captain West alone, but hurried forward when the voice called to him, and the colonel held out his hand. When they had shaken hands, the colonel said, “How much gas have you left in your cylinders, Maddison?”