A Test to Destruction (18 page)

The fog hung low upon the Salient that morning, blotting out the deadly landscape. The working parties of the night before slept on until 10 a.m., then opened their eyes to less than nothing, for all was to do again, without respite—cleaning rifles, puttees, boots, uniforms, then drill intended to give some effect of coherency in what inevitably was to come. They grumbled, “Lampo’s all spit and polish, like the rest on’m.”
Phillip felt their dullness to be beyond him. What could he do, to bring some kind of regimental spirit to this near-mob of mixed up Scots, Irish, Londoners, and others with dialects and habits from a score of different British districts and homes? He spoke to Bill Kidd about it.

“You tell me what line to take, and I’ll follow it, old boy,” replied that individualist, shortly.

“You’re a lot of help, I must say.”

“I’ll do what you tell me—sir!”

In the afternoon it was known that the Germans had broken through on a 9-mile front, from Bois Grenier south of Armentières to the old 1915 battlefield of Festubert. The Portuguese had left their trenches and fled in such panic that some of them had stolen bicycles of a Cyclists’ battalion sent up as reinforcements. About this Bill Kidd, who had dumped himself in the orderly room, was savagely sarcastic.

“When last seen, all those bastards, poxed up to the eyebrows with old man siff, were making for the red lamp district of Hazebrouck,” he said. “Their officers live on the fat of the land and treat their men like bloody pigs.”

“Every single one?”

“That’s what Bill Kidd said, old boy, and that’s what Bill Kidd meant. They’ve let down the B.E.F., that’s enough for me!”

Phillip knew that rather ugly mood of Kidd’s when he had been drinking. Unable to resist the desire to give balance to the other man’s emotionalism, he repeated, “Every single one, Bill?”

“You ’eard!” retorted Kidd, a rasp in his tone, showing the yellows of his darting eyes. “Christ! Sitting here in the mist waiting to be scuppered gives me the guts ache!” He shoved a pile of typed papers over the edge of the table.

Gotley, the adjutant, got up and said, “I have to see the Quartermaster, sir, if you’ll excuse me.” He went out.

“Look here, Kidd, aren’t you going a bit too far when my adjutant has to make an excuse to go out to avoid embarrassment?”

“Not far enough for Bill Kidd, old boy! I’m not concerned with the delicate feelings of a bloody clerk, anyway.”

“It doesn’t help, you know, chucking Gotley’s files about.

“What’s the odds, old boy? We’ll be burning this bumph before long.”

The telephone buzzed. Kidd listened, put it down. “What did I tell you? Get ready to push off at an hour’s notice! I’ll go and warn the companies.” He shouted out for the R.S.M. “Where are you, you old skrimshanger?” To Phillip, he said, “I may as well take the old lad with me,” as he went out. He came back to say, “I’ll warn the transport to get loaded, and tell Coates, the Doc., and that bloody priest.”

This last for the middle-aged, nearly bald C. of E. parson who had been sent to them the previous morning.

“You won’t talk like that about the padre before the men, will you, Bill?”

“My dear old boy, I pay respect where respect is due.”

“So do the men.”

No orders came that day to move. After a rainy night with unceasing gun-fire and further exhaustion for the cold and dispirited working parties the bombardment swelled to a continuous storm of light and noise upon the Salient, extending from the south. Dawn with its nihilism of grey was filled with cauldron bubbling. Orders came to be ready to move off immediately. ‘Spectre’ rode up through the mist later in the morning.

“The Boche has got into Messines, Phillip. We’ve given up Armentières. The Brigade is to be put in the line. How do you feel about your men?”

“As you know, sir, we’ve had neither time for company nor for battalion training. The fatigues have exhausted my young soldiers.”

“It’s hard on them, I know. Get them to feel that we’re all in it together, Phillip. Are you satisfied with your officers?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“How is Gotley shaping?”

“He’s a good chap!”

“Now for the tactical situation. We are being lent pro. tem. to the Scottish Division, to help hold the high ground from the Menin road to Wytschaete. As you know, the ridge extends to Messines, and overlooks the railway junction at Hazebrouck. By holding the northern end of the ridge, we shall overlook the Boche west of Messines. Let your men know this. Give them an idea of the supreme importance of holding Wytschaete. By their holding on, they will be saving the Second Army, which in turn will help to save every soldier in the B.E.F. If the B.E.F.
is driven back to the coast, as it may well be if Wytschaete is lost, we may be scuppered. That means we may experience, across the Channel, what Belgium and France have suffered. I know it’s the old stuff, but it’s true. If we lose Wytschaete we’ll lose Hazebrouck, which is the junction for all our supply trains. If that happens, a few of us may be confined in the bridgeheads of the Channel ports, but a million more will find themselves in the prison camps of East Prussia. Tell them this, Phillip. Tell them also that if we stop the Boche,
as
we
shall,
the German decline will be as rapid as their present onrush, for they’re using up all their reserves of men and material in two or three tremendous gambles. Tell them that Haig has said that if we hold the Germans here, they are as good as sunk by the summer. Tell them that no battle is so bad as the fear which paints it in the imagination beforehand. And above all—above all, I repeat—let them know that you understand how they feel. You’ve been through it, tell them about yourself, take them into your confidence. This is the end of trench warfare, the beginning of mobile war, the beginning of the end, tell them. Tell them that our losses of guns and ammunition on the Somme during the past fortnight have almost been replaced. That’s one up for Winston Churchill! By the summer the Germans will be showing the first cracks, and ‘when the leaves fall we shall have peace.’ Do you remember that saying of the Kaiser in nineteen fourteen, used in the Raemakers cartoon, with the German dead lying in the marshes of Pinkst?”

After ‘Spectre’ had finished speaking, Phillip said, “You can count on me, sir.”

Leaving Gotley in the orderly room, he went round the huts with Kidd and the R.S.M., a newly appointed sergeant from the base named Adams, with two wound stripes and a Military Medal. “Attention! Commanding Officer!”

Imitating the genial, impersonal manner of Lord Satchville he told them first to sit down. Then in his soft voice he told them that, despite all appearances, this was the last year of the war, in which the Germans would be defeated.

“Our Brigadier, the one and only Westy, has just told me what I am going to tell you. This is the Germans’ last win-all, lose-all attempt.

“Now ‘Spectre’, we all call him, has been on Haig’s staff at G.H.Q. He knows what he is talking about. Through him, I
met Sir Douglas Haig once, when I had come out of battle last year, just below Passchendaele. Haig asked me to tell him what I thought. Well, I was only a lieutenant then, as I am now, except for this acting rank, and I was rather scared at finding myself face to face with him. But I felt his kindness, and when he asked me to speak my mind, I did so. I told him exactly what it was like up there, with sixteen stretcher-bearers needed to bring in one stretcher through the mud. I told the Field-Marshal what the men on the spot said: that it was murder. But they kept on, and got to the crest, from which they had been overlooked for years, when every waggon and column of men in the Salient below was shelled.”

Conscious of Kidd’s sceptical gaze upon him, he went on, dreading a break in his thought. “I wish there was time to get to know every one of you individually. I realize that you come from different regiments, each with its special memories of home. That’s the link that has been cut, connecting each one of you with happy memories of pals.”

Damn Kidd looking at him like that, the conceited bastard.

“Now look here, you chaps, things aren’t too bad, you know. Hundreds of thousands of Yanks are on their way to France, while tens of thousands of our chaps from England are coming over the Channel every day. The tide will turn, if only we can hang on.”

His voice must sound thin and husky, how feeble he must appear, all pretence of affability now gone, a strain in his manner, the faces regarding him without expression.

“Now I want to tell you something about myself. I think you must be feeling as I felt at your age, but after the first shock of going over the top, things weren’t so bad as I imagined. I was windy as hell, white in the face and all that. We all were. But soon we didn’t give a damn for bullets, only about one in a thousand hit a man, and most of those caused minor wounds which were blighty ones. But the worst part, however many times a chap’s been over the top, is the first half minute.”

Was there a slightly sardonic look on Kidd’s face? Had he made a fool of himself? Exposed his own weakness, by saying too much? He felt his words to be coming nervous and thin, that he had lost the point.

“Well, we’re all in this together, boys. Each one of us must think, not of himself, but of his pals. We must stick by our pals,
which means our country. Our country is our people, remember. It took a war like this one to bring that home to everybody. Out here, we have regiments, a bit mixed up at the moment, but all the chaps I’ve seen and served with during the past fortnight were damned good men. And you must realise that I am ordy another man like yourselves, quite useless unless you stand by me. I won’t say that you’d be no good without me, for that wouldn’t be true; but it is true that I’ll be no good without all of you. I promise you I’ll do my best, at all times, never to let you down.”

Weak, thin, what was he saying? Everyone would surely see through him as nothing at all. “All right, Mr. Adams, let them sit down awhile,” he said to the R.S.M., who had been ready to jerk them up to attention.

“Very good, sir.”

A lance-corporal ran to open the door. Phillip smiled at him and said “Thank you, corporal” as he went out, followed by the other two to the next hut. At the door he hesitated, then told Kidd that, as second-in-command, there would be a lot to see to: so he would go on alone. When Kidd had gone, he said to the R.S.M.: “I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve seen you before!”, as he regarded the man’s splendidly alert face.

“Sir! With your permission! Charing Cross Station, September ’16, sir! I had the privilege of being addressed by you as I stood in a hospital train, gunshot wound in arm, sir.”

“I remember. You told me about Major West, as he was then, with the Seventh battalion in the White Trench. And I asked you what you
really
thought about the war, and you replied, ‘We’re all in it’, which just about summed things up.”

“That’s right, sir!”

“Well, Mr. Adams, I have an idea I’d like to go round the rest of the huts alone. That is, if it won’t in any way impair discipline, so if you agree—and do say what you think—I’ll do that.”

“Very good, sir!”

“But do you think it will be all right, really?”

“I do, sir! And thank you, sir, for what you’ve done. In my opinion, since you asked for it, sir, your visit was just what the young soldiers needed. It will give them something to put their sights on, sir!”

“I hope not!” laughed Phillip. “I thought it was the Sergeant Major who had that place in their thoughts, at least on the parade ground!”

“Beg pardon, sir, it was a slip of the tongue.”

“It was a very good slip, Mr. Adams! We’ll have to do that act together when we start up The Wasps Concert party again. Now I mustn’t keep you. What you’ve said makes me feel much more confident. I’ll be able now to finish the round by myself.”

The R.S.M. saluted and went off. Phillip entered the next hut where, after opening the door, he waited outside to give the sergeant in charge a chance not to feel caught on the hop.

“Thank you, sergeant. Let your men sit down, will you?”

At the end of the visits he was in fervent mood, telling himself that when they went over, he would go with them, in the first wave; and leave Gotley to send back reports to, and transmit orders from, Brigade; doubt came with the very idea. For if he were killed, was Kidd to be trusted? How far was the Mad Major, as the men called him, genuine fire-eater, how much was it put on? Which came first, Kidd’s idea of himself, or the idea of care for the battalion as a group of men to be moved in adjustment to situation, reserves held back ‘to putty up’, as ‘Spectre’ said, holes in the line. His Boche-eating idea would lead to all being thrown away via Kiddish bravado.

A little uneasy from these thoughts he returned to the orderly-room, to study the Situation Map which had come in from Brigade, while new thoughts rushed across his struggle to concentrate: how far was all care and thought foredoomed, a battalion being but a pawn among hundreds of pawns: to advance into machine-gun and mortar fire would be suicide, yet the fates of his men were already settled: to die or not to die was no longer in his hands. If only he could feel detached, be like Father Aloysius, upheld by prayer on July the First: but then the padre had had no responsibilities, no fears of being a dud, he had had only to climb over the parapet and walk forward, reading his breviary, his ‘little book’ as the men called it, his lips moving with prayer, upheld by the courage of a non-combatant whose only duty was to comfort others, and in doing so bring comfort to himself.

Major Kidd returned. He had the rather dark, slightly strained look, on the edge of rancour, which showed that he had been drinking. Sitting down, lighting a gasper, inhaling
deeply before blowing out a lot of smoke almost in Phillip’s face, he said through his back-teeth, after a quarter glance at the other man, “Look here, old boy, as your senior in so far as service goes, I think I ought to tell you that it isn’t done to dispense with your R.S.M., when you inspect the men’s huts, for whatever purpose. I suppose you know that in every unit the R.S.M. is responsible for discipline?”