A Test to Destruction (17 page)

It was a poignant moment: they had been through much together. Phillip, as he walked away in the rain now falling, heard cheering. He turned and saluted the faces behind the barbed-wire fence. Thank God he had kept back O'Gorman.

At Bresle a draft of nearly four hundred men arrived with nine officers from the I.B.D. at Etaples for the 2nd Gaultshires. Most of them were 18-year-old boys, with but six months training. There were a few old soldiers, combed out of base jobs after wounds which had kept them out of the line since 1916 and 1917. Some had blank faces, and dead almost furtive eyes.

At Bresle could be heard the continuous noises of battle, upon which were borne many rumours; some were confirmed by the night summaries from Corps. The MICHAEL attack, which had begun on 21st March, had gone deeper towards Amiens against the remnants of the Fifth Army, now under the command of the French General Fayolle.

By the icy-cold evening of 28th March it was known that the MARS attack had been launched that morning upon Arras, and been repulsed with heavy enemy losses.

The next evening, Good Friday, they heard that Third Army, which had taken over the northern sector of the Fifth Army, held the line of the Ancre; that the French, below the remnants of the Fifth Army, had lost Montidier; while the Fifth had gone back seven miles towards Amiens, and the vital railway junction at Longeau, a mile east of that town, was now within range of heavy German guns. Would they be sent south? Phillip felt the old dreads of going into action, the more fearfully now that he was away from the line.

Easter Sunday was cool and showery, with bright spaces in the day. Moggers, from whom most of the news came, said that night that General Gough, with his headquarters, was in charge of preparing lines of defence well to the rear of the battle.

It was after midnight when orders came,
Prepare
to
leave
camp
on
the
morrow.
Before this, Moggers had offered to bet Lampo a
bottle of whiskey that the Division was waiting to go north to join Second Army.

On April 1 the 2nd Battalion the Gaultshire Regiment, led by its German Band (instruments shining in the sun and to hell with Hun aircraft) marched over the hill to Baizieux and down again to Warloy, through country untouched by war. After a halt to rest for an hour—both old and young soldiers were soon showing distress—they went on up the long rising road to Varennes, coming in late afternoon to the railway sidings at Ascheux, so much larger than when Phillip had arrived there from England with Jack Hobart's machine-gun company sixteen months before.

The long train came in, to stop with shrieking greaseless jolts and nervous high notes of a copper horn. The journey was slow. It took the best part of two days, with many shuntings into sidings to let other troop trains pass down to the Somme. The old soldiers, never enthusiasts, their bodies now gone to salvage and their minds to compost, slept or smoked, having few words; the new boys showed interest and even excitement in all they saw, shouting out to placid civilians what they would do when they got at the Germans.

Along the coast of Northern France the engine of the Chemin de Fer du Nord dragged its train, rolling slowly over the bridge crossing the Canche below Étaples, with its views through dirty windows of woods and distant sands.

“If Longeau is put out of action, we'll be for it,” said ‘Spectre'. “This line will be the only way through,” as they passed a battery of anti-aircraft guns.

At least the journey gave two nights of sleep out of the cold; but the party spirit declined as they crossed the Pas de Calais.

To Phillip this was familiar country, seen from a railway carriage window—flat green fields divided by polders or dykes marked by rows of decaying willows; St. Omer, headquarters of Sir John French in faraway 1914, now surrounded by canvas tents, wooden hutments, and picket lines of horses. St. Omer, still a town very nearly untouched by war, still part of the old world of comfort almost beyond imagination—yet a boring, dull place to officers in jobs done on chairs, who slept in
beds
all night, who, if they got wet, could change and dry their clothes before a fire, perhaps on a clothes-horse…. Mother before the kitchen fire, reading Grimm's
Fairy
Tales
to them by candle-light, beside the washing on the upright wooden frame.

A long wait in the sidings of the station; then, at last, to the thin cries of the horn those shuntings, jolts, clash-bang-groan. They were going north, passing through the west-east line of the Monts de Flandres—a row of gravel hillocks rising out of the level green plain, above the most westerly of which, Cassel, flew the banner of the Second Army. To the east, and the firing line, the low mounds of Vidaigne, Noir, Rouge, Scherpenberg and Kemmel, crossed the T of the Wytschaete-Messines Ridge—from which in one direction might be seen the English Channel, and in reverse direction the Flemish plain almost to the Dutch frontier.

They had to wait an hour at Hazebrouck. ‘Spectre' was angry that this period had not been used for making tea, for each company had brought a couple of large dixies.

“It's your business to find out these things from the R.T.O., who presumably knows how long any wait at his blasted station will last! There's plenty of boiling water in the engine!”

Phillip had already talked with the R.T.O., and been told that troop trains were now passed on from station to station, their ultimate destinations not being known; he supposed this was because enemy agents were active. Phillip thought it best not to argue the toss with Westy, and said, “Very good, sir.”

In old newspapers, the first seen for a fortnight, it was possible to see what had been happening, from the maps. The war-correspondents' accounts had long been discredited: in them the lightly wounded were always cheerful and sure their own side was winning; larks sang through the barrage (they did, but heard only by eggs-and-bacon-with-coffee ears, well to the romantic rear); the Germans were always disconsolate and knowing they had lost the war (the proud and ‘arrogant' prisoners were never interviewed, only the hang-dog kind). Now, reading Bonar Law's announcement in the House of Commons of the opening of the 21st March assault, ‘Spectre' cursed and threw down the
Daily
Trident
of 22nd March.

The train-wheels whimpered to a stop outside shabby Poperinghe, crowded by camps; clanked on past a siding near hospitals and the graves of the years; and finally shuddered, with blow-off of steam, at a camp siding. Here they saw the mulberry face of Moggers, who told them that Hubert Gough had been removed from command of the Fifth Army.

“Now if only they had said to me instead, ‘'Op it, Moggers, you're for 'ome——'”

“It could not be Haig's doing,” said ‘Spectre'. “It's those damned ‘frocks'!”

“The hounds of Whitehall have done what the Alleyman couldn't do, and torn up the mud-balled fox!” said Phillip.

“That's the sojer's life, Lampo. Up with the rocket, and down with the stick.”

While Moggers was speaking, an adjacent mule laid back its ears as though preparing to lash out with hind legs at the Quartermaster. Moggers uttered a roar of anger and rushed at the mule, giving it a kick, amid laughter from the onlookers.

It was like old times again—almost.

It was known that other German attacks were mounted, ready to be launched. MARS had been repulsed at Arras; MICHAEL was held along a front west of the Ancre to Villers Bretonneux, seven miles east of Longeau railway yards. There remained to be launched the thunderbolts of ST. GEORGE I and ST. GEORGE II in Flanders; VALKYRIE north of Arras to Lens; ARCHANGEL north of the river Aisne. And so,
Nach
Paris!

Such were the German blows planned to weaken, and finally to shatter, the Armies of the Allies in the West.

The object of an attacker in war is to pierce the steel front of his opponent, and, entering into softness, to disrupt and stop delivery of his supplies—food, ammunition, reserves. Thus the defender’s fighting soldiers starve, and resistence crumbles.

But if an on-driving attacker goes too far forward in his destructive impulse, without entering into softness of the administrating services, he lays himself open to a side-blow or blows which may stagger him and in turn cause a break in his own supply services.

The situation in Flanders during the first week of April 1918 was that VALKYRIE and ST. GEORGE I were mounted, and preparations for ST. GEORGE II were well forward.

*

When they reached camp Moggers went sick. He had been subdued ever since they had come out of the line. The M.O.
suspected an ulcerated stomach and sent him down to the base. One more link with the old battalion was gone: how far away were those days of peace and quiet at the White City, how callow he must have been to resent the fun of Moggers when first he had arrived there. But ghosts had no place in Flanders among so many new faces. Legends, yes; the past was gone and seemingly forgotten, save the funny stories, the legends retailed in Y.M.C.A. hut, E.F. canteen, Officers’ Club, and Battalion mess.

Coates, the R.Q.M.S., wearing both South African ribands with those of 1914 Star and Long Service Good Conduct—the rooti or bread-eating medal—was promoted Quartermaster with honorary rank of lieutenant. He became the centre of respect among new young officers listening to the legends of the great Colonel Moggerhanger, tales covering the years from the Retreat from Mons to the March Retreat. How the General of the Light Division, a cavalryman appointed to command what was left of it after four days of continuous fighting, wept in Moggers’s arms before going off his head with the strain—of being in Moggers’s arms. How the grey-haired guardian of the electric light plant at Combles, on being given by Moggers a sled-hammer with which to smash his engine just after he had painted it red, white, and blue, had locked himself in with his engine and had refused to come out, although the South African Brigade was fighting an entire German division just across the way. Only when the Springboks, having fired off all their ammunition and lost nearly all their men, had surrendered to a German colonel who said, ‘Why didn’t you surrender long ago, why did you have to kill so many of my men?’ did the engineman unlock his door and allow his engine to be smashed, while remarking to Moggers, ‘There’ll be trouble over this, you’ll see, when they find out.’ How Moggers, coming upon an old mash-tub near Maricourt, had had it trundled into an orchard and had a fire lit beside it to heat a score of petrol cans filled with water for a hot bath into which he had climbed, his 18-stone body as white as a lily and his face as red as a beetroot. There he sat, in full view of the troops, ‘a sight for sore eyes’, while his batman scrubbed his back with a loofah. Moggers gave his own Parabellum to Phillip before he left, to replace the one lost when he was captured.

Phillip felt less anxious as he got the hang of a battalion’s organization. He visited the snob’s shop, where boots were repaired; the M.O.’s hut, where more than one old soldier was
trying to swing the lead to get to the base: with gleat due to chronic gonorrhoea, flat feet, piles, or other hopeful complaints; the tailor’s hut adjoining the Q.M. stores, where three bespectacled men were busy sewing on to jackets the coloured flashes of battalion and division; the cookhouse, where bad rations were shown to him, dried vegetables salvaged from bomb damage at the base, mouldy bread, reasty bacon, compressed slabs of Australian rabbits with heads, scuts, and fur still attached, once frozen in bundles but now in parts deliquescent; the picket lines, where mules still thinly rectangular and mud-rashed gnawed at their neighbours’ rugs, being on half rations of oats and hay; the bandsmen’s hut, the carpenter’s hut where wooden traps were being made to catch the grease in water from the cookhouse drains, to be sent to salvage for eventual use in the making of high explosive.

Once again it was masses of paper-work for Phillip, sitting in the orderly room smoking one of his twin Loewe ‘Captain’ pipes sent out from home.

He had forgotten the padre, a newcomer, an elderly pale man with a nearly grown family at home, judging by the photographs in leather frames in his cubicle.

“Do you think I should visit the men in their huts, Captain Maddison?”

“It is good of you to suggest it, padre, but later on, perhaps. All this night work, you know, leaves them pretty exhausted. I’ll tell Colonel West of your suggestion.”

When Phillip returned to the orderly room he had a shock. ‘Spectre’ had been given command of the Brigade. A new C.O. was on his way up from the ‘colonel’s pool’ at the base. He arrived on the evening of the 5th April, a big man, with reflective brown eyes, an amiable country gentleman who had been a major in the Special Reserve battalion when war broke out. After serving for five months in France he had gone home in December 1915 with jaundice; upon recovery he had been posted to the depot in Gaultford to supervise the training of recruits. He was about fifty years of age, Phillip considered.

The next morning ‘Spectre’ took him up the line, held by another brigade of the Division, with Phillip in attendance as adjutant. During a routine strafe of shelling the new C.O. repeatedly crouched down in the communication trench. He
apologised again and again, saying that he would soon get acclimatised. After returning he had a private talk with ‘Spectre’; and when he went back to the pool next morning, Phillip was given temporary command of the battalion.

This did not please Captain Kidd, who appeared at the orderly room with an official request, in writing, to be allowed to see the Brigadier. What he said Phillip never knew, but he suspected that Kidd had complained of his inexperience as a battalion commander; for ‘Spectre’ afterwards rang up Phillip and suggested that he might like to put Bill in Part Two Orders as acting-Major and Second-in-Command. This was done, and Bill Kidd put up a crown.

That night Phillip went up with the working parties, accompanied by Bill Kidd. One party went into No-man’s-land to put up wire. It was quiet. No flares went up from the German trenches. Kidd came to Phillip, whispering, “I don’t like it, old boy. What does it mean? I have a feeling the bastards are creeping up and any moment we’ll get it, from the flanks. You ought to have told Tabor to put out flanking parties, you know.”

“Naturally, I arranged that with the C.O. of the Moonrakers holding this sector.”

“What are you going to do about it, stay here until we’re scuppered?”

“What do you suggest, Bill?”

“Might send a patrol forward, to listen at the Boche wire.”

“Would you like to go?”

“Me? I don’t give a damn!”

“Very well, go forward by yourself, taking your runner, and come back here and tell me if you hear anything.”

No-man’s-land was about 300 yards at that sector. The wire concertina coils were being placed roughly a third of the distance before the Moonrakers’ front line. Kidd was soon back.

“I heard them talking, old boy. They’re bringing up the old minnies. I swear it’s that. I heard bumps, like oil cans being pushed down. We ought to shove off, old boy. Any moment now——”

“Yes, you’re right, Bill. I’ll tell Sergeant-major Adams to get the word passed down, to return to the Moonrakers’ trench. Most of the wiring is done, anyway. Get a move on!”

The forward working party was going down the communicating trench from the front line, while Phillip and R.S.M.
Adams walked on top, when low flashes arose behind them, followed by dull thuds. They turned and watched. Within a few seconds great fans of light arose, and then the crashes of the minenwerfen drums of ammonal. “We’d better get down, sir.”

The two slid down into the trench, and had joined the men hastening back when red and green rockets arose, and soon the British barrage was swooping and screaming overhead, the shells bursting in and above the German front line.

Later when Phillip was reporting to ‘Spectre’ he was told that nine minnies had been reported by the Moonrakers. “Bad luck, you’ll have to get the wire replaced tonight. Many casualties?”

“None, thanks to Bill Kidd. He put up a good show. He went forward alone, and heard them dropping the drums into the wooden mortars. The Alleyman must be hard up for material, he’s improvising again, on the 1915 patterns, sir.”

Kidd was in high spirits, helped by whiskey. Phillip thought that Bill had been giving Tabor his version of the matter when he returned from the orderly room, for his voice tailed off and then was silent a moment before he recovered himself to say, “Bong! A faint hissing! A dull thud! Crash! And the moon shone bright on Charlie Chaplin! Hullo, old boy, what did ‘Spectre’ say?”

“He said nine minnies had come over, and that you’d put up a good show.”

“Well honestly, old boy, someone had to use some savvy——I ask you!” as Bill Kidd glanced at Tabor.

*

On the night of 7/8th April Corps Summary of Intelligence said that there were now 199 German divisions on the Western Front. Of these, 88 had been identified as engaged in the MICHAEL attack, while 31 remained in reserve, and fresh.

Dining with ‘Spectre’ at Brigade H.Q. that night, Phillip learned that there were two Portuguese Corps, of two divisions each in the line, south of Armentières.

“That is where the Boche will push,” said ‘Spectre’, adding that, behind the enemy front along that low grazing country, intersected by canals, dykes, and waterways, the roads had been observed to be full of transport, with train movements from Lille, Roubaix, and Tournai. Much artillery had come north, according to R.A.F. reports.

Phillip was returning with the R.S.M. through the misty darkness of the moonless night, having visited the battalion working and wiring parties up the line, when gas shells began to swoop over along the whole front. They splashed yellow, oily liquid from the soft bursts. No high explosive fell. Out of damp darkness there swooped the softly spinning containers, each
woo-er-woo-er
followed by a slight
pop
on arrival.

He telephoned the Brigade-major, his acting-adjutant, the Fusilier subaltern, Gotley, having gone up with the working parties. These parties were made up of more than three-quarters of the battalion strength. ‘Spectre’ told him to get all the sleep he could.

“You can do nothing until your men come back.”

He could not sleep, but lay with the old helplessness of himself, in command of an untrained incoherence of men, whose officers he hardly knew: a ‘crush’ of unfamiliar faces, most of them very young, a mere mixture of shoulder numerals officer’d by various regimental badges worn only a few weeks after leaving cadet battalions at home. What would happen if the attack came while they were up putting out wire and doing other jobs under the R.E.? He got up, and wandered about, box-respirator at the alert, wincing in his mind at every flash in the sky, dreading the imminent crash of the Boche barrage.

At last the working parties came in. Some of the young soldiers were crying, burned about the face and hands with mustard gas, which had raised blisters, some of them half-an-inch thick. Forty-two other ranks went to the Aid Post.

*

If Phillip—one among many junior officers at that time to find themselves in command of scratch battalions—was worried, so was every senior officer in France and Flanders, up to the British Commander-in-Chief. The previous afternoon Sir Douglas Haig had conferred at Aumale with General Foch, now the Supreme Allied Commander. Foch had issued a directive for a joint French and British offensive between the Avre and the Somme—the northern ‘hinge’ of the MICHAEL salient. All signs, said Haig, pointed to the imminence of the VALKYRIE and ST. GEORGE attacks against tired British divisions, in the line between Arras to Ypres.

Haig found Foch ‘friendly but immovable’. While the conference was sitting, a note was passed to Haig. It was from the
commander of the British Fourth Army, who wrote that he could not carry out the attack, as directed, unless he had two more divisions. General Pétain, also, had asked for 11 more French divisions. Foch held to his plan, and ordered that preliminary movements for the counter-piercing of the MICHAEL bulge should be made the next day, 8 April.

*

The following night more working parties from the 2nd Gaultshires left camp to collect picks, shovels, screw-pickets, coils of wire and other dreary weights for their work in the Battle Zone. As on previous nights, they went through Kruisstraatpolk, south of the Canal, to the Damstrasse and Pheasant redoubts near the White Château about a mile behind the front line. The sky flickered with gun-fire. Shortly after 4 a.m., hot tea with rum was dished out to the returned soldiers. Some of the young boys refused it through exhaustion; a few were crying. When they had dropped to sleep, some still in equipment, upon the hut floors, Phillip went back to his hut, to lie upon a stretcher bed. Hardly had he curled up when he heard the bubbling rumble of a barrage down south. He got up to listen in drizzling mist, thanking God that it was not falling on their front.

Had VALKYRIE been launched upon the Lys plain? What if the attack was a feint, and the real push was coming against the Salient?

With knees drawn up to chin for warmth, hands shut tight, he lay in his bag of stitched blankets across the wooden bars of the stretcher, seeing the formless discolorations of the 1917 battlefield, edged by the splintered wooden stumps of the Menin Road and living again the terrors of the nights upon the timber tracks. He breathed deeply to calm his mind, waiting for daylight to come; then getting up, he went out into the cold dampness of fog, and returned feeling that now he could sleep; but hardly had he dozed off when O’Gorman came in with a mug of hot sugary tea made a sickly yellow by tinned milk.