How Dear Is Life

by Henry Williamson

  They stood in the flickering darkness, under a church; they waited with hope of billets, following with their eyes the forms of Captain Forbes and the new Colour-sergeant passing down a row of cottages, the officer banging on each door with his stick, then the flash-light of an electric torch, and some of their numbers ordered in by Mr. Ogilby. The platoon officer had already told them that a cooked meal would be arriving soon, after which they must get what sleep they could. They must not take off their shoes.

  “We may move at a moment’s notice.”

  Phillip and Baldwin were among the last to go into a barn behind the cottages. It was a wooden affair, with a ladder up to a loft, cracks in the floorboards, and in the upright plank walls which gave glimpses of the dilating sky; but it was dry, with hay soon spread.

  Unwrapping his blankets, he made some sort of a bed. The loft was shaking with the distant explosions, which seemed to travel through the ground. Then Lance-corporal Douglas’ voice shouted from below that grub had arrived; and Phillip followed the others down the ladder. The field-cooker had not turned up; only a ration of cheese, with hard biscuits. Phillip was surprised how hungry he was. There was tea, sweet with sugar and rum. He soon felt cheerful, and went out into the street, where G-S waggons and horses were drawn up. With relief he saw cousin Bertie.

  “Hullo. I thought you were back at the convent.”

  “We came up to take over the Coalie’s transport.”

  “Goal?” Phillip thought of leather helmets, grimy faces.

  “The Coldstream. The transport is about all they’ve got left.”

  Someone had got hold of a bottle of wine. Phillip and Baldwin went down the street, looking for the estaminet. It was on the corner, open, a dim light on the counter. Baldwin opened a tin of Maconochie and put it on the stove, watched by an old woman with a wrinkled face, in black bodice, skirt, loose cotton stockings and wooden sabots. She stood and watched with expressionless eyes from the doorway leading to the back kitchen.

  “Allemands no bon. Obus poom! No bon!” she muttered, as the oil-flame jumped with the reports of 60-pounder guns firing in a field some distance away, the shells screaming low over the cottage.

  “Anglais!” said Baldwin. “Bon, n’est ce pas, madame?”

  “Avez vous du bif-tek, madame?” enquired Phillip.

  “Si si,” she replied, and turned away to light a candlestick. Phillip followed her into the back-kitchen. With the light in her hand she went through a door and down three steps. Looking down, he saw that the entire floor of the little cellar was piled with bully-beef tins.

  “Un franc!” she said, holding up a finger, while retaining a tin in the other.

  “Bully bif no bon! Mon ami et moi, nous desirons bif-tek frit avec pommes-de-terre, madame!”

  “Ne hichny niet! Allez, allez!” she cried, shooing him away. Phillip laughed with Baldwin at the idea of buying bully pinched from the troops.

  There was a pot of coffee on the stove. They each drank a tall thick cup, with rhum, and shared the tin of stew; and feeling more cheerful, went out into the street, in time to listen to an altercation between the Quartermaster and the Army Service Corps officer in charge of the buses.

  “I’m sorry, but my orders are to return with my convoy to Ypres immediately after your troops have de-trained.”

  “Look, old boy, my chaps are going into action, and as I told you before, all our transport is back at St. Omer. We’ve been allotted the first-line Coldstream transport, to take up rations and ammunition to the line. If I have to use them as second-line transport, to go all the way back to rail-head to draw supplies, where’s my first-line transport?”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s nothing to do with me. You should indent with D.A.D.O.S. for more transport.”

  “By that time the Germans may be in Ypres! We are under orders to go into the line at a moment’s notice. Where will our boys be without supplies? I need three of these buses, and as your superior officer I am ordering you to leave them here, with their drivers!”

  “Then the responsibility must rest entirely with you, sir,” said the young A.S.C. officer, who was a second-lieutenant, while the Quartermaster was an honorary Captain. “This is my first convoy, sir. I only arrived from the base this morning.”

  “That’s all right, I’ll give you a chit.”

  The Quartermaster wrote in his Field Service book, signed it, tore it out, gave it to him.

  “That will cover you, my lad.”

  Phillip had already realised that the Army Service Corps had a much better time than the infantry. Herbie Low, who lived down Hillside Road, and had enlisted at the beginning of the war, got six shillings a day. The A.S.C. were always in the rear areas, far behind the front. An idea struck him, and he went to find his cousin. “I suppose there isn’t a vacancy in the transport, is there, Bertie?”

  “Not now, at any rate, young Phil. But there may be. By the way, you should address me as sergeant. I came up because the Coldstream sergeant was killed when a salvo of Black Marias fell on their picket line. Fed up with foot-slogging?”

  “Well, sort of—Sergeant.”

  *

  To Phillip it seemed that he had hardly lain down in the moon-chinked loft before Sergeant Henshaw’s voice was saying, “Come on, wake up, there! Corporal Douglas, get your men fallen-in by the church!”

  “Come on everyone, out of it!”

  In silence they folded their blankets, then down the ladder to where rifles and equipment were piled by the wooden wall below. “It’s four minutes to midnight,” said Baldwin, peering at his wristlet watch.

  While the company was forming-up by the church there was the sound of a multitude of trotting hooves. In the moonlight a mounted column came down the pavé street, tall helmets gleaming above the horses. They were French cuirassiers. Behind them came flat British caps, and Phillip saw they were all mounted on grey horses.

  “How’s it going?” called out Elliott.

  “Fine, laddie! There’s bluidy thousands won’t goose-step afore the Cayser no more. Who are you?”

  “London Highlanders. Territorials.”

  The news spread down the squadrons. There were friendly cries, some cheers.

  “Gude luck, London Highlanders!”

  “Same to you, Scots Greys!” More cheers, this time from the London Highlanders.

  The trotting of horses died away to the north. They waited in the street of St. Eloi, until the order was given to return to billets, but to be ready to move again before dawn.

  Heedless now of gunfire and remote crackle of musketry Phillip curled up in his corner of the loft; then, warm again, stretched his legs and worked his feet to and fro, as the tensions of day left his mind. Touching his crucifix, he prayed voicelessly for safety, and had sighed himself to sleep when, “Good lord!” said the voice of Elliott, across the loft. “It’s Hallowe’en, old son!”

  *

  They awakened to crashing gunfire. Out of the hay they crawled, unspeaking. Down below hot tea was ready, with bread and bacon. Afterwards an inspection of iron rations, ammunition in pouches, field-dressings. Water-bottles to be filled from the chlorinated water-cart. Cloth bandoliers of the new Mark VII ammunition were handed out. In clips of five, they looked like pointed nickel teeth.

  As the pavé with its steam-tram rails began to gleam with the grey sky, brutal torpid downward dronings filled the air above the dark church, seeming to Phillip to be growing heavier and more massive while he waited in a cold sweat of utter defencelessness, until one tremendous metallic rending upon another rose with wafts of blackish smoke in which darker objects were thrown up into the dawn beyond the tiled roofs of houses. Were these Black Marias? Then the first British aeroplane seen in France drew his gaze upwards, as the biplane passed over the village, the painted Union Jack under each lower wing clearly visible, and the helmet’d heads of pilot and observer looking over the side of the fuselage. They waved: a cheering sight.

  *

  The L
ondon Highlanders marched away from St. Eloi, passing fields where an occasional small stack of hay or corn stood. They came to a road beside which peasants in peaked caps, double-breasted jackets, and sabots were slowly pulling up lines of roots and throwing them into a long waggon shaped like a boat. They stopped work and stared as the kilted troops marched past. Hardly had they gone by, when Phillip saw, with others, a strange-looking aeroplane circling in the sky above them. Its wings were curved back at the ends—it must be a Taube! Had the peasants been signalling to it, he asked Baldwin, when a few moments later Black Marias began to drone down, buzzing fatly, hugely, to burst with black rending, in pairs, two short of the road, two beyond it. The nearest was a hundred yards away; even so, splinters buzzed and hissed past alarmingly. One fell with a tinkle on the pavé, and Phillip stepped out to pick it up for a curio; he dropped it, blister-hot.

  After two more 8-inch salvos the shelling stopped. So far it was not bad, he agreed with Baldwin. He was relieved that he could stand it. If that was all that was going to happen when they were in reserve, he was glad he had come.

  As they marched into a village of red brick and tiled roofs, shelling started again. What made his heart drum hollow in his white-bone-seeming ribs was wondering where the next one was going to fall. He began nervously to work his teeth, while trying hard—how silly it was—but anyway try to think whether or no the insurance policies of such buildings in Belgium had a clause, like the London Tariff policies, stating that in the event of war, riot, or civil commotion—how did the clause end? If he did not finish the thought, a shell would fall beside him with its colossal rending iron crash. Think of Mr. Hollis’ face, quick! But in the way was Mr. Howlett’s benign face puffing Hignett’s Cavalier from his pipe until—down! down—tiles, bricks, stones went up in one black shattering explosion which hung a haze of brown dust in the air, falling slowly down rather like pictures of a water-spout at sea; then the smoke was drifting away. He was surprised to realise that he was still marching on. Could it be himself who was walking on, upright? He tried to swallow, found his throat was dry and prickly. Far away he heard a cry of Stretcher bearers! The order was given to halt.

  Why were they halted in the Square, when the shells were falling right into it? In white-faced panic he was aware of others only as khaki flat movements, except the pink side of Baldwin’s face. Why did they not lie down? More terrible swooping, groaning noises came corkscrewing in massive black steel upon them. He felt split in two as he saw one actually bursting upon the pavé, with a hot, screaming noise, more rending than when the shells had plunged into the clay of the fields. Why did they not move away at the double? Only fools would remain where they were! Obviously that Taube had signalled back to the batteries, just as the English Farmans did! Fools, fools, fools, fools! his mind screamed, seeing in his mind the irritable grey-moustached face of the Earl of Findhorn when he had gone to his grey Boer-War-rotten bell tent to get leave to go with Father and Mother to Crowborough. The Earl was not really a London Highlander; he was a regular officer of the Guards, where the men, according to Baldwin, were treated with the harshest discipline. When they were drilled on the square, with rifles at the Present, the blood showed round the nails of their right-hand fingers, so hard and continuously were they ordered to slap their rifles at the first of the three movements. They were automatons. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. O God, was this going to be like the Modder River battle, which Uncle Hugh had told him about? Why did they not double off and get on to the flanks like old Purley-Prout always did, unlike those Berehill and Fordesmill fools whose men came right up to the camp in frontal attack upon the Dowager Countess’ paddock and banged away on the barb-wire fence with their poles!

  Memories of Boy Scout ‘manoeuvres’ with present fears and dreads raced in panic through the head of the hare with the thoughts of a fox. Instinct suffered; it was utterly stupid to stay there. At last he managed to say to Sergeant ‘Grannie’ Henshaw,

  “Why, oh why, are we standing still here?”

  “Because that is the order,” said ‘Grannie’ Henshaw, as he twirled and rctwirled his moustache.

  *

  When the scouts returned, with their reports, the order was given to about-turn; and the battalion marched back the way it had come for three hundred yards and turned off the road, near a large red-brick building beside a wood. The brick building reminded Phillip of the Randisbourne Home of Rest, for many old people were being brought out of it. But these were dressed in black, whereas the Infirmary people wore red.

  “Poor devils,” said Baldwin. “I suppose that’s a sort of Workhouse. I suppose the Germans are over the skyline? They’re rather awful, those big shells, don’t you think?”

  “Norman, I don’t think I can stand much more,” said Phillip, his tongue clucking in the dry roof of his mouth. He thought whitely that he never was any good at things like fighting, football, or boxing. His throat had always dried up at the school-sports, so that he could never run properly.

  “You’ll be all right, Phil. The only thing to do is to keep on. It’s the only thing one can do, really. Anyway, we’ll stick together.”

  “It’s the noise I find so awful.”

  “Same here. Did you notice Collins shaking and muttering while we waited just now? I thought he was going to throw a fit.”

  “Did you see Martin when he was hit by a bit of whizzing brick on the ribs?” asked Elliott. “He looked white as a sheet as he cried out ‘Send for the stretcher bearers’.”

  “You’ve made a pun, d’you know it?” said Baldwin.

  “How d’you mean?” asked Phillip in a shaky voice.

  “The Scots Greys called this place Whitesheet.”

  “I don’t damn well wonder at it, old son,” said Elliott, with attempted jocularity.

  While waiting by the Hôspice he heard the Colour-sergeant telling “Grannie” Henshaw that the battalion had been ordered to debouch from the village by the road along which the steam-tram lines led up to the sky-line a quarter of a mile beyond; but the scouts had reported it was “very undesirable”. He said also that the battalion was now in support of the cavalry brigade holding the crest—reassuring information to Phillip, who thereby had hopes of returning to Ypres that night, and perhaps steak and fried potatoes in an estaminet, before a proper night’s rest in the Cloth Hall.

  “Fall in, ‘B’ Company!”

  At first it seemed that his hopes were to be realised; for after passing through the village once more, they turned into another road leading down a long gentle slope towards distant woods and villages. While marching, they had a fine sight below them of a battery of Royal Horse Artillery galloping up, swinging round with the guns in line, and soon the 15-pounders were recoiling with their short stabbing scarce-visible puffs followed instantly by sharp cracks and the paa-a-angs of swishing shells. As they passed the battery, not more than fifty yards off the road, some of the company waved, Phillip with them. Those gunners had been out since Mons, and now he was with them, he, Phillip Maddison! He longed to fire his rifle at the Germans. Enemy shells were still womping down as though aimed anywhere. He felt he had had his baptism of fire. I shall be all right now, he told himself.

  *

  Leaving the battery behind, the battalion swung off the road and moved down a cart track beside a small brook, and followed its course towards a wood about six hundred yards in front. He wondered if there were any fish in the brook. Perhaps he could make a fire in the wood, to dry his clothes before riding back to Ypres. This seemed to be a distant possibility, as they were ordered to halt and fall out at the edge of the wood, near a farmhouse where peasants were still walking about. Perhaps they might get some hot café.

  “All officers to the Colonel, sir,” said a scout, saluting Captain Forbes.

  Phillip watched the officers going to the Earl of Findhorn. Each one came to attention, and saluted him where he stood with honorary-Colonel ‘Oscar’ Hatton, the gaunt brown-moustached
warrior with his Queen’s, Coronation, and Territorial Decoration ribands, thin long legs, and riding whisk with its white horse-hair fringe for flicking off flies. First came Major MacAlister, who was on the Metal Exchange; Captain Mac-Laglan, the son of a bishop, of ‘A’ Company; Fiery Forbes and his friend Captain McQuaker, a small, pale-faced officer known as ‘Oats’, of ‘G’ Company. ‘Oats’ was remarkable to Phillip in that he was the only officer he had ever heard to swear, or seem to lose his wool. ‘Oats’ McQuaker once, at Bleak Hill, had run down ‘G’ lines crying out in his high voice, “Come on, you blighters!” just before battalion parade. Beside him stood Captain Millar of ‘C’ Company, a man with a rather dour appearance; Captain Duncan of ‘H’ Company; Captain Orr of ‘D’, Captain Mackae of ‘E’; and portly ‘Jumbo’ Meiklejohn of ‘F’. Phillip and Baldwin watched as the officers stood and listened to what the C.O. was telling them.

  When the C.O. turned and pointed up the steep slope towards the rattle of firing, Phillip felt a stab of fear. He forced himself to breathe slowly, to keep himself steady.

  Martin, one of the Leytonstone tent, monkey-anxious beside him, said, “Christ!” He looked thin and white as a sheet.

  Shortly afterwards Captain Forbes returned with Mr. Ogilby and Mr. Tennant. All their faces were very serious. They had a conference with Colours, and the company sergeants. Captain Forbes pointed with his stick in the same direction. Phillip swallowed the moisture which flowed into his mouth suddenly, and turned aside under necessity to urinate. Several other men were doing the same thing, but he hardly noticed them, so harsh seemed his breathing to himself. Lily-livered, lily-livered, he thought wildly, struggling against the scenery becoming lopsided.

  An agonising thing occurred, after they had fallen in. When the order to charge magazines was given, and Phillip tried to push home the bolt, he found that his rifle was jammed. The bullet would not enter the barrel chamber. He tried again and again. In desperation he struck at the knob of the bolt. It jarred forward. But the tip of the bullet broke off. So did the next one. With sudden hope that he would not be expected to go into the trenches with a faulty rifle, he went on legs that seemed filled with water to report the defect to Lance-Corporal Douglas. His mouth opened, but no words came. His jaws worked only, his breath seemed solid.