A Fox Under My Cloak (40 page)

Rolling his head Captain West repeated, “Morphine—Phillip, come nearer——”

Phillip knelt to hear the voice, feeble and whispering, “The Grapes, Lime Street. My mother—tell her——” His hand sought Phillip’s. Phillip held the cold hand between his own. “See my mother—The Grapes, Lime Street—the City—tell her—all my love.”

“I understand, Westy. But you’ll be all right.”

Boon meanwhile had taken a small silver wax-vesta box from the breast pocket, opened it, and let two tablets roll into his palm. “That’ll settle you, sir,” as he put them into his master’s mouth.

“More—more——” complained the voice, as the chin stretched back. “Put six under my tongue.”

“And don’t forget to put the requisite number o’ crosses on his for’ed at the aid post, my lads,” said the R.S.M. to the stretcher-bearers. “All right, I’ll see to it,” and with the
indelible
pencil from the message book and spit from his mouth he drew two thick crosses on Captain West’s forehead. “Now then, gently does it—mind that leg—lift ’im careful——”

Blood running from bitten lower lip, eye closed, the man on the stretcher lay feebly with pain; then through clenched teeth came the murmur, “Get round the flank——” and then a strangled screaming broke from his bloody lips. “Morphia——”

The bearers waited while the paroxysm passed, then Boon opened the mouth and put two more tablets under the tongue.

The jaws worked; the slow, partial swallow; the struggle to articulate. The batman said, “All right, sir, don’t you worry yourself no more. Mr. Maddison ’eard you, sir. ‘Get round the flank.’ Didn’t you, sir?”

“Yes, Westy, I heard. I’ll carry on. Leave it to me. We’ll get round the flank.”

The uninjured hand again made to find Phillip’s; but the wounded man was sinking into a coma.

“The bearers will get him back to the dressing-station as soon as we’ve moved off, sir,” said the R.S.M. “I think you are senior to Mr. Allport, sir? The captain told me you was out in ’fourteen, sir. Will you take command of the battalion, sir? The orders come just before the captain was hit, to carry on the attack acrost to Lone Tree.”

With forced jocularity Phillip heard himself saying, “Mr. Adams, I have not heard any order, beyond that given by Captain West!”

“Very good, sir.”

“Have the men got their rations, water, ammunition, Mr. Adams? What about bombs?”

“Each man carries two bombs, in addition to what the bombers have, sir. It’s bombs we need in this sort of work. The Jerry
trenches are eight feet deep, you’ve got to hand it to Jerry, sir, he knows how to protect his infantry in trench warfare, all right. Shall I send a runner for Mr. Allport, sir?”

“Yes, please, Mr. Adams.”

When the slight, fair-haired Sandhurst youth came, Phillip, feeling Colonel Mowbray on his face, said in the colonel’s
manner
, “‘Spectre’ West’s orders are to get round the flank. Who is the senior of us?”

“I was gazetted last July.”

“I was March. Righty ho. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll go to the end of the trench, and lead the company through as far as I can get. Then we’ll go over the top and string out and make for the Bois Carré then swing round by platoons, in an arc. No covering fire, remember—it will only advertise that we’re going to attack. Will you, company sergeant major, tell the platoon sergeants? Mr. Allport, will you bring up the
rear-half
company?”

“Shall I report back to the farm, sir?” asked the R.S.M. Then, “You’ll send a runner back with any information, of course, sir? I’ll take them. A negative report is as valuable as a positive report, sir. I’ll see that all reports get to brigade, sir. The battalion ammunition dump is behind the H.Q. dugout, sir. I shall be there, sir.”

The R.S.M. saluted, and Phillip said, “We’ll be dining in Lille tomorrow night, with any luck, Mr. Adams!” And with a swiftly thought prayer, he turned away with a wave of his walking-stick.

H
IS
exhilaration soon settled to determination, now that he was moving. Men cumbering the trench were in his way; he climbed out and walked along the parapet, swinging his walking-stick, indifferent to occasional bullets, mere strays and spents, as he thought of them. Looking down into the trench he said, as he passed, “We're going round the flank, you chaps, wait there till you get word to move from your sergeant.” Then looking to
the east, he saw the stumps of the Bois Carré about a quarter of a mile away on his right front, beyond the white lines of trenches lying parallel and numerous in the yellow grass
spreading
to the smoke-laden horizon of the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the great spoil-heap known as the Dump.

The Fosse Way trench extended to the Vermelles-Hulluch road, along which in the distance wheeled transport was moving, under shell-fire in places. He waited by the road, while the men came up, to halt by him. He did not know what to do, so he said, “Keep at intervals of five paces, and follow me up the road.”

The stumps of the, plantation were now slightly forward on the right. He walked on, followed by his string of soldiers. The mackintosh was hot, so he took it off, and slung it over his shoulder. Odd walking wounded could be seen coming down the road in front; bullets hissed by overhead; figures in khaki were everywhere lying and crawling in the grass. Some called out, with cries for help, for water. The less badly hurt were grateful when he said, “Help is coming soon, boys.” Others stared with drawn faces the hue of clay. Forcing himself not to heed the cries, he walked on, while arms rose waving and from some came despairing wails and weeping. What a game it all was, what a game. From the Bloodhound Patrol to the First Gaultshires!

The company was now strung out along the road. He halted, and said to the nearest men “Right turn”. They turned all along the road, and walked forward in line across the old No Man's Land, towards the plantation. The ground was pitted with shell-holes, many of them occupied by wounded men. Dead figures lay about in all attitudes of complete repose, however stricken: joined to the ground in its stillness. He had a curious sensation, from part of himself in detachment, that invisible parts of their once-bodies were still about in the spaces of the air, looking down at the poor little bodies rather curiously as they became smaller and more remote. He thought of
Cranmer
; it was almost as though Cranmer's face were beside him, very near him, knowing all that he was thinking. It was strange how the feeling was bearing him up, almost leading him on, the other side of the glass. It was wonderful not to be afraid.

The stumps of Bois Carré were in front. It was a tumbled
wreckage of chalk and posts and wire, splintered boles and branches, roots in air upheaved by shells, through which the bag-lumpy parapets of trenches straggled, with their broken faggot-like revettments, and everywhere the first
feld-
grau
dead he had seen since 1914—flung upon the ground with English dead—passive among the crawling and crying wounded.

There were no direct shots coming over now; only tired bullets flopping down, some making their last eccentric spins as they fell with their deadly little music. From over the slight rise to the left, in the direction of the brown roofs and chimneys of Hulluch, a heavy racket of rifle and machine-gun was mingling with gruff thuds of bombs; but nearer in front the comparative silence was strange. Were the Germans waiting to open up, when they got nearer? He was not bothered: if they did, they did.

Even so, having left the plantation behind, and with the stark little ruin of the Lone Tree less than a quarter of a mile away, Phillip began to feel alarmed. It must be a trap. He walked closer to the tumbled wire of the captured German front line wondering if he dare try and cross it and take shelter in the shell-holes which had churned up the level wilderness into a frozen sea of chalk stuck with splintered balks of wood and crumpled sheet-iron—a petrified foreshore horribly untidy with a jetsam of broken rifles, stakes, machine-gun tripods,
pickelhauben
, torn grey tunics—and the sprawled dead. So he gave the order to cross the front trench in lines of platoons as that was as good as anything he could think of.

“We'll advance in four waves, Mr. Allport.”

“Very good, Sir!”

“
Sir
!
” He thought of Mrs. Neville, and what a tale he would be able to tell her, to match that of Mavis' bogus staff officer, Wilkins, who ordered the recruiting parade on Blackheath. How long would his luck hold? Anyway, he was only obeying a superior officer's order. He
was
getting round the flank!

He walked in front of and away from the leading platoon as the men were moving round the cratered chalk, extending to the new formation. He was about a hundred yards ahead when he saw a German standing up so near that the band of his
pork-pie
hat was a bright red. The German waved. Phillip beckoned, his heart beating fast. Other Germans were clambering up beside the first. One carried a white flag. With a calm feeling Phillip waited until his runner, clambering to
reach him, was near enough for him to speak to in a low shout, saying, “Tell Mr. Allport to remain in charge until I come back, and not to advance until I give the word.”

“Very good, sir.”

Taking long, but slow strides, and using the walking-stick, Phillip approached a group of five German officers in long
overcoats
. One had a fur collar. He felt that he was being drawn along, as on the afternoon of Christmas Day when he rode on the Belgian bicycle towards the Hôspice. When he got within talking distance, he shouted out, “Prächtige kerl, ja?” and then, before he could think, “Ist Mittagessen fertig?” which was about all the German he knew. With relief he heard them laugh. He straightened his brassard, and walked towards them.

Other Germans were now appearing out of the frozen sea, while a line of British troops advanced from the rear of the German position. Very soon scores of Germans were standing up, hands raised above their heads. Then right away down to Lone Tree and beyond he saw that the garrison in the salient had surrendered. Poor old Westy, he had missed it all.

His lack of German was made up by the fur-collared
hauptmann
with the numerals 51 in red on his grey shoulder straps. He spoke English almost like an Englishman, and wore the silver-black riband of the Iron Gross. He clicked his heels and said, “Ritter!”

Remembering from what his father had once told him about Germans introducing themselves by their surnames, Phillip succeeded only in stumping muddy loamy heels, as he replied, “Maddison”. Hauptmann Ritter bowed again, as he stood by the framed entrance to a shelter on a level with the trench fire-step.

“You are a little late for Mittagessen. We expected you some time ago, awaiting the inevitable, since our ammunition was used up. Please to enter.”

Inside the shelter was a carpet, a bedstead with coverlet and white sheets, pictures on the matchboarded walls, an enamelled stove, a chair, a table. The German officer spoke sharply to an orderly, who sprang up stiff and went outside.

“I have ordered coffee, Herr Leutnant.” He put a box of cigars beside Phillip.

“Not at the moment, thank you, sir. This beastly gas——”

“Where did you learn our slang expression, ‘Prächtige kerl',
may I ask? Ah, Christmas Day! We, too, had hopes, after Tannenberg, of the war being over by Silvester—the New Year. Do not let us talk of war. Ah, here is the coffee. Sugar? It is beet sugar, we cannot just now supply Jamaica cane sugar!”

Phillip wondered if the coffee was poisoned; the German captain seemed to feel his thought for, having poured two cups, he made no attempt to pass one, but, “Do help yourself, won't you?”

There was a vase of cornflowers on the table. The hauptmann explained that they had been grown in a garden in the support line. They were a favourite flower in Germany, he said, as he took one out of the vase and gave it to Phillip.

“Now, if you will excuse me, or rather, since I am your prisoner, sir——”

“Well, thank you very much, sir,” replied Phillip. He heard shouts outside, English shouts, with Welsh accents, and going out of the dugout, saw that some of the kilted troops with bayonets outheld were on the parapets. Among them an officer, revolver in hand, was violently beckoning with the other, and crying “Keep them covered! Keep them covered!” It was Douglas of the London Highlanders.

“Don't shoot, don't shoot!” Phillip cried out. “They've surrendered!”

At first Captain Douglas did not recognise him, but when he did, he said sharply, revolver in hand, “What are you doing here?”

“Looking round the place.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About five minutes.”

“How did you get here?”

“Through the Bois Carré—we advanced after a flank
movement
.”

He felt amused that Douglas was suspicious of him. Douglas knew that he had German cousins. There were stories of German officers in British uniforms. Even Westy had believed that one had given false orders behind the British lines to cause confusion. Like the Mayor of Arméntières being shot, for telephoning through to the Germans, in 1914!

While Captain Douglas was waving the prisoners to climb the parapets, under escorts with fixed bayonets, a whizz-bang arrived with a scream and crack and shower of chalk and
Douglas afterwards was lying on his face, kilt in ribbons, and his backside a mass of blood. Seeing that he was cared for, Phillip walked back to the Gaultshires, which under Allport had
advanced
, seeing that the German resistance had collapsed. The Gaultshires looked delighted, not unnaturally: for they had expected to be killed. Phillip was wondering what to do; he felt light-headed with relief; and was saying to Allport, “I think we had better lead on, to the Lens–La Bassée road, and attach ourselves to the nearest battalion. Then I'll report where you are——” when he saw Allport looking with delight at a short, sturdy figure with an ugly face, approaching through a gap in the wire, followed by a string of soldiers. ‘“Pluggy' Marsden!” said Allport. The figure recognised him: a full lieutenant of the Gaultshires. He had been in the first wave, and had been lying before the wire since early morning.

“Well,” said “Pluggy” Marsden, “this is what I call a bit of fat, boys!” After some more enthusiastic talk, Phillip said that he ought now to hand-over his command.

“I am due to report back at Mazingarbe.” After further
explanations
, it was agreed that a runner should go back to Le Rutoire, to report the position to brigade.

“Stout fellow,” said Marsden. “By the way, aren't these
your
prisoners?”

“Well, the Welsh and the London Highlanders seem to have collared them. I'll say goodbye now. For all I know, my C.O. will put me under arrest for not having gone back with my blokes this morning!”

Lieutenant Marsden looked up from his field message book. “Au revoir!”

“We'll meet again, I hope, sir,” said the C.S.M., saluting.

“Yes, I hope so,” added Allport.

“So do I,” said Phillip, as he turned away, swinging his stick. He added to himself, “‘Archibald, certainly not!'”

*

He wanted to see his emplacements, not from a sense of duty (which he did not as yet possess) but out of curiosity. His mind, formed in ancient terrors, brooded romantically on the war: not the war of waves breaking, and so dying, upon the foreshore of terror: not the war of each actual laborious moment, but War, an extended dream, the jetsam of combat become quiescent under ceased movement and lost hope. He wanted to walk about and
stand and stare and let his feelings possess him, so that he could lose himself in a dream that was beyond nightmare—the romance of war, the visual echoes of tragic action. Gas brassard on arm, he was free; no-one would question him if he appeared to be going about his job. He must visit the Lone Tree, imagine the barbed-wire as it was when holding up the assault.

The Lone Tree had a smooth brownish bark, or what was left of bark after hundreds of bullets had scored it. The bark was speckled with yellow. It smelled like a sixpenny cherry-wood pipe he had bought once. A few brown-edged leaves still
remained
on three unhappy stumps of branches.

All around the cherry tree the pitted chalky ground was strewn with dead and the movements of wounded. The white bottoms of London Highlanders were conspicuous among the grasses, as kilts of hodden grey lay torn and flung over still bodies. Hands lifted among the yet-alive crawling and dragging themselves, smeared with grey loam, around shell-holes, ghastly of face, torn of tunic; others were lying palely quiet beside patches of coagulated blood, where blow-flies stood, drinking. Others, less hurt, talked reasonably, asking when stretcher-bearers were coming. He spoke to many, as appeal after appeal arose to his face. He recognised little Kirk, still wearing his
pince-nez
as he lay back, bare-headed, a thick dark stain down one side of his tunic. Where was he hit? In the chest, came the whispered reply. Were the stretcher-bearers coming? Phillip told him that they would be coming soon. Anyway, the Germans were now a mile back, and the Fifteenth Division was in Lens.

He made little Kirk as comfortable as he could, then saying he had to go on, he left him, after promising—as he promised others again and again as he walked on—that he would report the need for stretcher-bearers.

He became weary, almost irritable with so many promises, all along the line, all through the thin grasses extending up to the gradual rise of Hill 69. How strange that there should still be skylarks among these thin yellow grasses clustering upright a dozen inches above the loamy soil pocked and gashed white with shell-crater and trench: chalk-white the kiltless rumps of the bulleted dead, those cleanly killed, not savaged and destroyed by high explosive, which had cast a litter of severed legs and arms and fractured shin-bones sticking out of laced boots. He began to feel hollow as though his life were ebbing away; he
felt helpless, for himself and others; his throat was sore; and only when his breathing suddenly was sickly trapped, and a petrifaction came upon him, that he was in chloride of lime hopelessly trapped, did he realise that he had come into an area where chlorine still hung about. So he hurried away east out of the hollow until he came close to the German front line beyond the tumbled wire along the slight ascent of the terrain which was the foot of the Loos Road Redoubt.