by John Masters
The other letter was from Guy, written on the Sunday, August 23rd. Virginia is well, so is Mother, but busy. He played for Kent against Yorkshire and after the Tykes had taken a few overs to make sure he was no more than he seemed, they flogged his bowling all over the field … but he had got Rhodes out. Well, one lives and learns. Lots of love …
He put down the letters and stared westward across the valley, unsighted. Fiona would not be writing … he saw her as he had last seen her, on a brief leave from Ireland … cursory, perfunctory, as though her mind was somewhere else. His wife? Technically, but in reality? A housekeeper, and not very efficient. Nor a good mother, as was obvious even to him. What could he do to make her believe in, and return, his love?
‘Major! Major Rowland!’
He started, turning. The CSM was there with a message form. ‘Orders, sir. We are to retire, all of us, at 3 p.m.’
Quentin wrenched his mind back to reality and the present, and glanced at the form. Times, lines of withdrawal, rendezvous … He looked at the valley. It would be a close thing, another forty-five minutes to go, and the Germans already so far forward. If only some reserve force could come now and hit them in the flank, they’d be sent reeling back in such disarray that they might not recover for days. But the only force available, General Haig’s I Corps, was miles to the east, as far as he knew, and probably continuing its retreat.
He sat back, beginning to think what orders he would have to give, saying, ‘Send for Captain Irwin, please.’
‘Sir!’
He had three platoons in arrowhead forward, and one to the left of company headquarters, in reserve, but able to fire into and across the Selle. One of the battalion’s machine-guns was with his left forward platoon. B Company was echeloned back on A’s right, and had to conform with A’s movements. The CSM broke in – ‘Look, sir!’
He looked up, at the same time becoming aware of the thin, now familiar drone of an aircraft engine. The machine’s wings glinted in the sun, turning. The Germans were firing at it, and now he saw the roundels of the Royal Flying Corps plain under the wings, and the heads of pilot and observer seen through the struts and wires. Lower, lower it came. He stood up. He shouted at the CSM, ‘Get ready to rescue them, Pierce, if he crashes. Take all the HQ runners.’
‘Sir!’
Pierce bustled off, yelling orders. German rifle fire directed at the aeroplane cracked lower and heavier overhead. The machine glided over Quentin’s head no more than twenty feet up, its engine sputtering and banging. It hit the stubble barely a hundred yards away, bounced twice and rolled to a stop. The CSM was already running out towards it, followed by four soldiers with rifles.
Quentin watched as the pilot climbed out of his seat, jumped to the ground, and hurried towards the CSM’s party. They met, arms waved for a moment, then two of the soldiers took up sentry posts over the machine as it stood throbbing on the turf, the propeller turning idly. The observer stayed in the aircraft, the others turned and ran towards Quentin. The German fire had ceased, for as the machine was landing it had passed over a fold in the crest, hiding it from their sight.
The pilot came up, tearing off his flying helmet and goggles. He looked about nineteen, Quentin thought, and was a 2nd Lieutenant. ‘I have a message from 11 Corps that I’m supposed to drop on the forward brigade headquarters this side of the Selle. But I can’t find any brigade headquarters over here. Could you pass it on, if I give it to you?’
Quentin said, ‘There isn’t any brigade headquarters this side of the Selle – just us and the East Surreys. But I’ll send it to my battalion headquarters, and the CO will know what to do when he reads it.’
He scribbled briefly on a message pad, and gave the note and the airman’s message to his CSM. ‘Deal with this.’ To the airman he said, ‘Won’t that machine start flying, if no one’s holding it? The observer can’t do anything, can he?’
The pilot said, ‘No, sir. The friction of the tail skid’s enough to hold it except on tarmacadam, and we don’t see any of that in France.’
‘Will you need any help to get off again?’
‘No, sir. These old BE 2 a’s can take off from a hearthrug … How’s it going here?’
‘All right. I’ve had twenty-nine killed and wounded in my company, and I imagine the others are the same. More Germans than we expected, but we’re giving them a bloody nose.’
‘Not more than we expected,’ the young man said heatedly, dragging a gold cigarette case from his pocket and lighting a cigarette. ‘We’ve been reporting the exact strength, and direction, and speed of the German columns since before Mons. None of those old fogeys at GHQ believes us. I myself told General Wilson what I’d seen with my own eyes. He told me I must be mistaken – his maps showed otherwise. Can you believe it?’
‘I think Field-Marshal French and General Wilson know what they’re doing at least as well as you do,’ Quentin said stiffly. The young man should have asked his permission before lighting up one of those damned cigarettes that were the latest fashion. The RFC seemed to think that because they knew how to fly these smelly machines the rules of military discipline did not apply to them: but the truth surely was that they applied even more strongly because they could not be enforced in the normal ways.
The pilot’s childlike face was haggard with strain, and his eyes bloodshot and deep sunk. He made a last attempt to make Quentin understand. ‘Sir, we look right down on them all day long. They can’t hide themselves, and so far haven’t made any attempt to do so. Nor have our own people. We can count them, too, and often have to – because GHQ never really knows where our own troops are. We tell them, and they believe us. But when we count the Germans in just the same way, they don’t believe us … because they don’t understand the air war. And you suffer …’
Quentin felt a grudging compassion for the worn boy, suddenly seeing in him the face of his own son Guy: but the war would be over before Guy could be in it, in any capacity. He said gruffly, ‘You look tired. Like a drop of whisky? I have some.’
‘No, thank you, sir. It helps for a few minutes, then, no bon. And I’ll be flying till dark and after. And I’m afraid my plugs are oiling up.’
He saluted and ran for his machine. Quentin found his CSM at his elbow. ‘Message gone, sir.’
Quentin looked at his watch. Two-forty. ‘Where’s Captain Irwin? I sent …’
‘Here, sir. I was trying to get the machine-gun unjammed.’
‘Did you? We’ll need it badly soon.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well done, Steve. Sar’nt Major, get headquarters ready to pull back in ten minutes. Steve, I want you and the platoon sergeants here in five minutes, for orders. The platoon commanders to stay with their platoons.’ He sat down on the bank once more, his chin cupped in his hands. He’d be leaving twelve dead on the field; with the seventeen wounded, that came to over a third of the strength that had marched into Le Cateau before this day’s dawn. And the day was not finished yet. A sudden increase of firing across the valley, both German and British, both artillery and small arms, made him raise his head. On the angle of the hill across the Selle, the British 18-pounders that he had seen earlier were firing faster, at targets in the valley below. The German artillery was firing concentrations of shrapnel at them, and at the barely discernible khaki-clad infantry close by in shallow trenches and behind the thin hedges. Brown and white and black puffs of smoke increased in number and density, the smoke drifting slowly across the hill, now obscuring, now revealing the scene. But there was little to see except the smoke, for the German infantry was all but invisible, and if it moved at all, moved slowly and in dispersed units – no longer the heavy masses of Mons and this morning.
Suddenly there was movement, to the left, the south – violent movement. Teams of horses, riders bent low over their backs, charged down the slopes, bursting through the tattered hedges, dust flying behind the racing hoofs and rolling wheels of the towed limbers. Quentin pulled his binoculars out of
their leather case and put them to his eyes. Withdrawal must have been ordered for the other brigades of the division across the Selle there; but first they had to extricate the guns: and the guns had been placed far forward, the teams sent back into cover – because the 18-pounders could not engage targets over the convex slope of the hill from any further back. Now, in a storm of shell and rifle fire the gun teams were coming up, full gallop, the limbers bouncing and crashing in air, to take back the guns. In the circle of the lenses he saw a pair of horses go down, bringing the rest of the team in ruin on top of them, legs, bodies of the drivers flying, the limber upended, another separated from its team, the leathers cut, the limber flying down the slope, turning over. Two of the teams reached the guns, the crews were dragging them out by hand, limbering up … one crew down, reaped by a scythe of machine-gun fire … another team galloping away, gun and all …
‘Sir!’ someone shouted in his ear. ‘Platoon sergeants here!’
‘Shut up! Look!’
He waited, breathless, sweat running down his nose under the binoculars, fatigue and thirst forgotten. Three guns were limbered up and going back. Little figures were struggling with two more … taking out the breech blocks … one last team fought its way down, one horse short, its traces cut, the animal dead … a triple burst of artillery fire exploded on it; neither man nor animal moved again. Scattered lumps and humps broke the clean line of the slope. Three abandoned guns and the skyward pointing trail of another stood silhouetted against the blue sky.
He put the binoculars away and faced the waiting men – Irwin, Pierce, Sergeant Tilehurst and three corporals. He frowned at them, on the point of asking why the platoon sergeants had not come, as ordered: then remembered that Hedges and Eden were dead, and Sergeant Foster had disappeared, so the senior corporals in those platoons were now acting as platoon sergeants.
As he began to speak, a shell burst immediately overhead. Captain Irwin was hurled forward and sideways to land groaning five feet away on his face. Blood was seeping through the khaki of his left trouser leg in two places, and the white bone showing in another.
‘Stretcher-bearers!’ the CSM called. ‘’Ere, ’urry up, man.’
Quentin kneeled quickly beside his second-in-command.
The face was twisted in pain, the eyes wide with shock, the mouth distorted. He took his hand and said, ‘You’ll be all right, Steve.’ Then the stretcher-bearers came, doubled low, for the Germans had suddenly turned their whole attention to the two or three hundred men of the Weald Light Infantry and the East Surrey Regiment who were holding the high ground east of the Selle. It was getting hot and would soon get a great deal hotter.
Quentin began to give out his orders for the withdrawal, his voice rising so that he could be heard above the crack of the bullets and the explosions of the shells.
The sun rose slowly, burning away another morning of mist across the fields of Picardy. The 1st Battalion of the Weald Light Infantry marched steadily southward, as they had all afternoon and all night after the battle. They were marching away from the enemy, and the ranks of every company were thin, for they had not reached the brigade rendezvous at Busigny without losing a few more men to straggling, exhaustion, and the oncoming darkness. The Germans had not interfered at all, and once contact had been broken on the forward slopes, there had been no pursuit – only the endless tramp tramp through the burning afternoon, the heavy twilight, the hot darkness.
Soon after dawn they had passed through a village where there was enough water for every man to refill his water bottle, and take three mouthfuls in his hands, no more, under the strict eyes of the watching officers. There was plenty more water – but no more time.
It was here that CSM Pierce, glancing idly up at a window, had seen a face peering behind half-drawn curtains and shouted, ‘Foster! What the ’ell …?’ He ran into the house and came out a moment later with Sergeant Foster, uniformed, carrying his rifle. Quentin said, ‘Why did you leave your platoon, Sergeant Foster?’
The sergeant looked right and left, as though seeking a way of escape. At last – ‘Nothing to say, sir.’
Quentin said, ‘You’re a damned disgrace to your uniform. You’re under arrest. Leave him his rifle, Sar’nt Major. Have him march with headquarters, and you be his escort until a court martial can be convened.’
Then the march continued. The strength of the battalion grew as they began to pick up stragglers, men lost from other battalions, brigades, and divisions in the confusion of the battle and retreat. Most of them swore they were the sole survivors of such and such a battalion, and Quentin answered all such stories with threats of court martial, until his CSM said softly, ‘You know, sir, I’m afraid other officers are ’earing stories just like that from blokes wearing our cap badge … sole survivors.’
Quentin realized that Pierce was right. The Wealds had not lost many men to that cause: but then they had not suffered any catastrophe such as those he had heard of in the rumour mills of the long night, meeting other officers, hearing reports of messages sent and received … the King’s Own Royal Regiment had been ambushed by massed artillery and machine-guns and lost 400 men in two minutes … the Gordons and Royal Scots had been left to defend the front line to the last, to enable the rest of their division to get clear; and had finally vanished without trace under the German hordes … the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry – another Minden Regiment – had lost a company in a minute on the open flank over the Selle … the artillery had lost over thirty guns, and saved as many from impossibly exposed forward positions, some with German infantry less than two hundred yards away.
The II Corps had faced the enemy, and were retreating. So they had been defeated, albeit by greatly superior numbers. But Quentin knew his men well, and the feeling in the thinned ranks was not of defeat. It was of victory. They were obeying the orders to retreat, but it was with mounting impatience. His company wanted to turn round and give the Germans another, bigger bash on the nose, next time with the numbers a little more even.
Dust rose from a passing battery of 4.5-inch howitzers, followed by a battery of 18-pounders at the trot. Quentin realized that in the excitement over the capture of Sergeant Foster he had forgotten to fill his own water bottle, and he did not know when there would be another chance. He coughed in the dust and swore silently.
The company passed a cottage, a woman bending over low in the patch of front garden, her rear to the passing troops, the raised short skirt revealing the backs of plump white thighs. A voice from the ranks called, ‘Bus with your pichi, mum, let’s ’ave a dekko at the dusra chiz.’
Subdued chuckles and Sergeant Tilehurst’s sharp voice … ‘You chuprow, Smithers.’
Silence for a few minutes, tramping in the dust, then, ‘ ’Oo wouldn’t be in the navy?’
Pierce this time – ‘You might as well be, Tompkins, for all the good you are as a soldier.’
Quentin trudged on. Tom was probably having a pink gin served to him in the wardroom of HMS Monmouth by a white-jacketed Maltese steward. In a few minutes he’d go to his cabin, have a hot shower, and then be served a good dinner – sherry, roast beef, wine, port … Compare that with this! Private Tompkins was right!
The CSM was at his elbow. ‘We’ll have to promote at least one corporal to sergeant, sir.’
Quentin said, ‘I was thinking of Conklin, if Mr McDonald agrees.’
‘Oh no, sir! Begging your pardon, sir, that Corporal Conklin’s like my sister Bets – wipes his arse before he shits, begging your pardon, sir. Corporal Walton’s the best of our two-stripers now.’
Quentin said, ‘I’ll speak to Mr Hedges … I mean, Sergeant Jones. I think we did pretty well yesterday, considering.’
‘We was all right, sir,’ the CSM said, ‘remembering only a few of these blokes ever ’eard ball ammunition being fired before Mons. Not many was in South Africa with us, and since then, there’s been, what – five-minutes scrap one day up by Fort Sandeman in ’06, and that’s the lot.
They did all right, sir.’
Somewhere back in the rear files of the company ahead – C in today’s order of march – the men began humming a tune. After a time Quentin recognized it: It’s a long way to Tipperary. His own men took it up, and the humming condensed, deepened, and throbbed like the sound of an immense swarm of bees. Ahead of him a lance-corporal stooped to the grassy verge of the pavé, plucked a poppy and stuck it behind his chinstrap, shouting to his comrades at large, ‘Roses for Minden, poppies for Le Cateau, eh, mates?’
The humming grew louder, and behind Quentin a pleasant high tenor rose with the words –
It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go,
It’s a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know.
Good bye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square,
It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right there!
Daily Telegraph, Friday, August 28, 1914
GERMANS FLEEING FROM RUSSIAN
INVADERS
‘Running Like Hares’
‘Scenes of Panic’
From Our Own Correspondent. NEW YORK. Thursday. Dispatches printed here today describe a state of affairs in East Prussia just as thrilling in detail and as significant in portent as that which has prevailed in Belgium, but in this case ‘the boot is on the other foot’. It is agreed on all sides that the Russian advance proceeded with the steadiness, the precision, and the giant pressure of a great steam roller, and the effect upon the Germans, military and civilian alike, has been awe-inspiring.
