A Test to Destruction (19 page)

“Has Adams been complaining to you?”

“If he had, old boy, I wouldn’t tell you. As a matter of fac-ct,” he drawled, “if you want to know, I haven’t seen Adams since I was practically dismissed by you in front of the men.”

“Surely not.”

“Oh yes I was! And furthermore, old boy, it’s not my business to tell you how to run this battalion, but I consider it my duty to say that what you told the men, in my hearing, was defeatist. No bloody good at all! As a matter of fac-ct, old boy, you had the poor little bastards nearly pissing themselves with wind-up. You breathed defeatism, old boy, you
breathed
it!”

“Have you ever heard of neutralising fear?”

“What’s that when it’s at home—Shakespeare? I believe in straight talk. Be a Boche eater, old boy!”

“Very well, talk as straight as you can,” replied Phillip, with concealed irony. This man was a fool.

“By your leave, I will. I think you had hell’s own bloody luck at Albert that night, but it was the sort of fluke that happens only once in a lifetime. By all the rules you laid yourself wide open in every direction. You got away with it, but if those Germans had been normal Huns, who are bloody good soldiers, let me tell you, you’d have got the lot of us scuppered! And furthermore, old boy, if that had happened, and you and I remained alive at the end of the war, you’d have damned well got a court-martial! Bill Kidd’s telling you!”

Phillip thought to avoid a clash. Drunk men, he had already decided, revealed the dominant trait of their make-up. Kidd was a rather coarse person at base.

“What do you think is the right way to get to know apprehensive young soldiers at short notice?”

“Apprehensive my foot! Give’m the old one-two, every time, old boy!” Kidd moved his arms like a boxer, left jab, right hook. “Soft soap’s no bloody good, old boy! You want to stir ’em up,
give ’em something to remember when the old Jack Johnsons start comin’ over! You know—— A shout! A scream! A roar! Black in the face!”

He coughed raggedly, muttered about having been gassed at Oppy Wood, and after much rasping, chest-thumping, and bending down went on, “This isn’t a bow and arrow war, old boy. The men today don’t want your On! On! You Merry Bastards, Defile not your Mothers, and all that bilge of Shakespeare’s, but some good scrappin’ stuff.”

“What would you suggest, then?”

“What they want is definite direction. Like this, old boy. ‘The second bayonet man kills the wounded. You cannot afford to be encumbered by wounded Huns lying around your feet. The army provides you with a good pair of boots. You know how to use them!” Or this. “The Huns come in holding up their hands! The Lewis gunner accidentally keeps his finger on the trigger’.” As Phillip was silent he went on, his eyes dark and darting, “Ever heard Major Campbell lecturing on the ‘Spirit of the Bayonet’, with Jimmy Driscoll acting the Hun rushin’ at him with rifle and bayonet pointed for the thrust? ‘I side step! I grasp rifle at butt and upper band simultaneously! I twist to the horizontal! I fetch my knee into his bollocks so! He yells blue murder! His head comes down! I release my right hand! I point my fore and third fingers! So! I stab his eyes!’ And if his old woman has been set by some skrimshankin’ weed in munitions, he won’t be able to see the little bastard! That’s the stuff to give them! Turn ’em into Boche eaters! Take it from Bill Kidd! He knows what he’s talkin’ about!”

“I think you must have been Horatius in a previous incarnation, Bill.”

With R.S.M. Adams and Gotley, Phillip walked up to Wytschaete to look around.

*

Two hours before midnight, under a clouded sky made ruddy by near and distant fires, the battalion left camp and marched towards the gun-flashes illuminating the horizon of the Wytschaete ridge. Wearing issue tunic and trousers, webbing equipment, haversack, Parabellum pistol, water-bottle, and carrying a rifle, Phillip led nearly six hundred men towards the ruins of Vierstraat, along a track avoiding the cross-roads, remembering 1914 days as a picnic, hot baths in the brewery, slight figure of Prince
of Wales with walking stick cheered as they marched along the then almost undamaged road. He tried to dismiss all thought leading to despair that this was the end, and all so hopeless——

Brigade headquarters was in a farm. He felt apprehension when he saw ‘Spectre’, standing by the remains of a brick wall, talking to the Divisional commander. Were they to be put into an attack? He gave the word to halt, and seeing the Brigade Major standing near, with the General’s galloper, went up to them. “I think the Brigadier wants a word with you, before you go up, Colonel,” said Captain Rogers.

He felt a nervous quaver, almost of hysteria, as he imagined himself giving an account of everything to Mrs. Neville. “There was I, not knowing a damn thing about anything, being treated with great respect by someone double my age, as though I were a real colonel!” He felt like crying out, “I can’t go on!”, as the horizon was rended by the bursting of 5.9s along the ridge.

“The last information we had was that Wytschaete was held by an officer’s patrol of about forty Lochiel Highlanders,” said ‘Spectre’. “You are to reinforce them, but remain under my orders. Your job is to get beyond Wytschaete, cross the road along the crest and hold the village. Your left flank will rest on this road, your right extend south of the village. You will seek and maintain touch with your flanking units, the ‘Moonrakers’ on your left and the ‘Hadrians’ on your right. The Germans are in some confusion, we don’t anticipate much, if any, opposition. The Boche isn’t what he was; these aren’t storm-troops, but a second-rate lot, from what I hear. I’m sending three guides, and if you’ll get your adjutant to detail eight good men as runners, they’ll be able to find their way back to our headquarters here, Bassieje Farm. Is there anything you want to add, Rogers?”

“I think it would be wise, when going up the road, to keep a hundred yards between companies. Now if you come inside a moment, I’ll show you where you should establish your advanced headquarters.”

On a table of four ammunition boxes was spread a map. “Somewhere here, south of Wytschaete, east of the Wulverghem road. There are a number of old pill-boxes there. You’ll let me know as soon as you are settled in, won’t you? Then we’ll run up telephone and buzzer wires.”

Carrying shovels, balls of wire, screw-pickets and other clobber the Gaultshires went along a track gradually rising to a horizon
stained as though with milk; then, as they plodded on, hot and sweating under greatcoats, they saw the top of the white trellis of flares rising beyond the crest of the ridge, revealing by its light ‘Lampo’ standing beside the road.

Phillip watched the silent young faces looking apprehensively about them, little bunches of friends keeping together to avoid the devastation of private thoughts, while heads bobbed under the aimless swish of bullets, and, thank God, wide of the track, shells bursting luridly in the wastes beyond. To the inexperienced, with shovels, elbows and even hands held before them, their living now in hopeless fragmentary flash-thoughts of homes and mothers, all things must appear lost to them for ever. How could he comfort them, give them a feeling of unity? An insistence of repeated words broke into his reverie.
Pass
the
word
up
from
the
Battalion
Sergeant-major,
Mr.
Gotley
has
been
hit.

The leading company halted, the young soldiers crouching down while from traversing machine-guns cracks of bullets passed a few feet over, while they listened to that strange officer, ‘Kiddo’, so near to and yet so far from them, telling them what they would do to the Boche. “The Boche never dares come near the Mediators! Shall I tell you blokes why? The Mediators never take prisoners! The Boche smells the Mediators a mile off, never forget that, you crab wallahs”; while, as though in hopeless hope, the same overlapping words came up from the lower darkness, towards the milky stain beyond the ridge.

“Pass the word up from the Sergeant-major, Mr. Gotley has been hit.”

The adjutant had been detailed, with R.S.M. Adams, to bring up the rear of the battalion. This was Major Kidd’s place, as second-in-command, but Major Kidd had placed himself in the lead when Phillip had gone forward with O’Gorman.

Phillip went down to the rear of the column. Gotley was lying on a ground-sheet beside the track. He had been hit by several ricochets off the cobble road. The ragged flight of metal had torn his webbing equipment and tunic, and some fragments had entered below the stomach. “Water—for God’s sake—water!”

“Don’t let him drink,” said Phillip quietly. “Get Mr. Gotley back to the aid-post. Where are the stretcher-bearers?”

“I have them here, sorr.”

White arm-bands gleamed. “Put two morphia tablets under Mr. Gotley’s tongue. Tell the M.O. at the Aid Post.”

“I’m so—sorry, sir.” The voice was feebler. Phillip knelt, to seek the other’s hand. It was a clenched fist.

“You’ll be all right, old chap.”

“I’m—so—sorry, sir.” Paroxysm of suppressed in-gasping sobs. A low mutter, almost a sigh. “Tell—my—mother—to—come.” Phillip opened the fist, pressed palm and fingers between his own. The fingers sought to hold his hand, clawing at the loose skin of the back, where scars of phosphorus burns were still painful. He leaned over Gotley’s face, saying steadily, “Your mother is coming.” He repeated the words, again and again, willing the twisting face to be calm, to accept the truth he himself felt in his words, beyond the chaos of the present. The hand now lay trustfully between his hands; from the open mouth dropped two white tablets. The hand lay limp, the arm allowed itself, in final duty, to be placed under the blanket of the stretcher.

“Take Mr. Gotley to the aid-post at Kruisstraat.”

In comparative quiet the battalion went on up the road to the Grand Bois. But how different, he thought, from when he had lived there with the London Highlanders in December 1914. Ahead should be the ruins of the red-brick Hospice, the local workhouse still more or less intact in those days. The leading company was passing the vanished wood on the left of the track when an increase of bullets swished over.

“Get away from the road, and lie down! Pass the word down!” They scattered, all except Bill Kidd, who remained standing in the road. Ignoring this attitude of defiance, Phillip sat down beside the leading company commander, Tabor.

“It looks as though the Germans have got past the Lochiel patrol, Tabor. Perhaps your company, and Dawes’, should deploy to the right, a yard between each man. Can you spare Naylor to act as my adjutant?” Naylor was a dark, rugger-playing youth from the 3rd battalion at Landguard.

Having been instructed what to say, Naylor was about to go back to tell Captain Dawes of No. 2 Company what was to be done, when Phillip called him back. “I think you should go down and give the order to Three and Four Companies. Just a moment, Naylor.”

The new acting adjutant waited. Phillip could not think what to say, with Kidd, now lighting a cigar, a few yards away. He
must
think. At last, conscious of Kidd’s unspoken scorn, he forced himself to say, “They will follow on, behind Numbers One and Two, who will be in columns of platoons. That is, the first two companies will advance in line. Then Number Three will follow, platoons in line. Number Four behind Number Three, also platoons in line.” What was he saying? He tried to concentrate. “I don’t know if that’s a text book drill, but the idea is for three lines of advance, only the first in extended order. Companies Three and Four are to reinforce the advancing line, if necessary.” What a sardonic brute Kidd was, conceited and selfish. “The company commanders will have to use their own judgment: the idea is to get
to the top, ready to meet an extended advance of the Germans, and the two following companies to be ready to reinforce the front line.” He felt desperate, that he was near panicking, sending untrained troops over a terrain of old shell-holes in which coherence might be lost. Forcing away Kidd’s silent contempt, he got up and went to Kidd, and forced himself to say conversationally, “What do you think, Bill?”

“You’re the C.O., not me!”

After a further period of silence, Naylor said diffidently, “Shall I go along and ask the company commanders to see you here, sir?”

From the upright figure on the road came one word. “Christ!” followed by footfalls going towards Wytschaete.

“He’s hungry,” said Phillip to Tabor. “The Cannibal Kidd after a Boche for supper.” Then to Naylor, “Yes, ask all company commanders to come here, will you?”

“Very good, sir. After delivering my messages, shall I remain at the rear of the battalion, sir?”

“Yes, will you?”

“Very good, sir.”

The men continued to rest. Some were smoking. This was against orders—but had not Bill Kidd deliberately lit a cigar? He was a bit of a rotter, a 1917 soldier, coming out in the late spring, and after a few weeks in the trenches at Oppy Wood, getting home with phosgene gas. Obviously he played to the gallery over that gas. He was a show-off, the sort who was ostentatiously brave—just like himself—when others seemed windy. And yet, was he perhaps right in protesting silently against an unnecessary order. The machine-gun long-range fire had lasted only a minute. Supposing the delay in getting to the crest enabled the Germans to re-occupy Wytschaete?

It seemed to be taking a very long time for Adams to come up with Hedges and Whitfield. Meanwhile the Germans were massing, according to Corps Intelligence, along the Oostaverne line. That position was a couple of miles east of the road along the crest; he remembered it from going nearly there in June of the previous year, when Plumer had taken the Messines Ridge. Oostaverne—the West Tavern—was at least an hour’s march away from Wytschaete. He told Tabor this.

“I see that the German regimental commander of the troops there is called von Spee, sir.”

“Where did you get that, Tabs?”

“In ‘Comic Cuts’, sir.”

“I missed it. Von Spee, did you say?”

“Yes, Colonel. I remember it, because that was the name of the German admiral at the battles of the Falkland Islands. We had a geography lesson at the time, and were told about it.”