War Classics

by Flora Johnston

  Slowly and carefully, I passed all the carriages in review once more and at last, from the depths of one, I heard cheery English voices in conversation. They were deep in the carriage, and I stood on the step. The carriage appeared to be packed with luggage. ‘Have you room for two?’ I enquired doubtfully from the darkness.

  The effect was electric. A muttered exclamation came from the depths, then a cry, ‘Good Lord!’ and then two strong hands fell on my shoulders with a ‘Where in the world do you come from?’

  I laughed. ‘We’re going to Arras,’ I told him. ‘Is there room?’

  ‘Lots,’ he answered tersely and collected some of the kit. ‘Where’s the other of you?’

  ‘Along here,’ I pointed, retreating.

  ‘Be sure you come back,’ he cried anxiously after me. Joyfully, I summoned the Hut Lady and slowly we felt our way down the train again. But the burly form of the officer I had taken to be Belgian blocked our way. He was enormously tall and the collar was pulled up so close around his face that it was quite impossible to see him. Furthermore, he appeared to take no interest in us whatever. I was beginning to be anxious when a little way down a lantern flashed out and a voice called, ‘Arras, ahoy.’

  ‘Here they are,’ I cried with relief and once more my arm was seized and we were both drawn into the depths of the carriage. The faint light of the lantern revealed a couple of young officers with a vast supply of kit that might well have furnished a regiment encumbering every part of the carriage. We sat on cleared spaces in the middle and in the open doorway I recognised again the bulk of the tall, fur-collared officer.

  ‘Here are your things, sir,’ said one of our young friends respectfully while the great one entered and sat down in the corner opposite me. So he was English then, I reflected, and he spoke the best French I had ever heard an Englishman speak. I had flattered myself I always knew a stranger speaking French, but I had not known him.

  The train started, and we moved into a countryside as dark as the station itself. The dim light of the lantern was not enough even to let us see each other. The Hut Lady, I knew, sat on the opposite side next to one of the young officers, who engaged her closely in conversation. I sat almost within the embrace of the other, who told me that he had fought over every inch of ground hereabouts, and that he would point it out to me when it grew light enough. They all belonged to a Battery it seemed, and were going to Valenciennes.

  The Major in the corner – for so he turned out to be – suddenly broke into the conversation. ‘I saw you at the ticket office,’ he began, apparently addressing me.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied meekly. ‘I thought you were a Belgian.’

  ‘Belgian?’ he snorted, sitting up in his corner. The two young officers visibly quailed.

  ‘Only because you spoke such beautiful French,’ I added hastily – though, of course, Belgians don’t, as he knew.

  He seemed mollified. ‘I was at School at Paris. You spoke not so badly yourself.’ This was indeed praise, I felt. ‘Can you do the French “r”?’ he queried abruptly.

  There was intense silence, I noticed, in the compartment, while he spoke. ‘No,’ I rejoined sadly. ‘I can only make a bad shot at it. I’ve never heard an Englishman do it as beautifully as you.’

  ‘I’m not English,’ he snapped, nettled again. Another brick! I sighed. I dared not venture anything more, but he conceded in a few minutes, ‘I am Scotch – from Edinburgh.’ It was my turn to jump – and I suppose I did. ‘Perhaps you’ll say you don’t believe that either,’ he sparred, ‘from the way I speak.’ He certainly had the most faultless English accent, as we say at home.

  ‘Oh no,’ I returned coolly. ‘You see, I’m Scotch too.’

  He seemed interested but at that moment the train pulled up with a jerk. We were entering Albert. I stood at the window and looked out. The dawn was just breaking in queer, wavering snatches. Gaunt before me loomed the shell of Albert Cathedral.

  ‘The Virgin has fallen, you see,’ said the officer softly beside me. ‘She fell shortly before the Armistice. That’s the road to Bapaume. Goes straight off three maps.’2

  I looked at it in silence – the long white road to Bapaume. Indeed, there seemed singularly little to say. I could see nothing but ruins, shattered more terribly than any I had yet seen. But the silence was the same – the silence of Péronne and of Cambrai. It was the silence that I suppose there will be on the Day of Judgment, when we all stand at the Bar. At any rate, it made me think of that. Nothing else seemed like it. The grey mist of dawn and the long white road!

  I shivered, as I turned back into the carriage. ‘Cold, aren’t you?’ said the young officer considerately. Then his eyes wandered back to the road. ‘Topping road, that,’ he echoed appreciatively. ‘Goes straight off three maps.’

  The Major was asleep in his corner, and his two young companions began to talk in whispers, with many a wary glance at him. I noticed that in the streaky light from the windows the guttering light of the lantern looked unearthly. ‘I know every inch here,’ confided the Hut Lady’s friend. ‘Achiet-le-Petit, Achiet-le-Grand. We’ll pass these,’ he said, scanning the map. ‘Just think of a railway being up here now.’ I sat opposite the Major, as silent as himself, and the subaltern, with his arm half round me, in a cheerful voice told me where we were.

  Curious things were moving outside the window, scarred and shapeless things – in hundreds. They suggested faintly something I had seen long ago – what was it? – something that wasn’t true, I knew. It was Arthur Rackham’s pictures. I sprang to my feet. ‘What are these?’ I cried in horror. ‘Oh, what are these?’

  My companion, whose eyes had mainly been on me, took a cursory glance outside. ‘Trees!’ he said in astonishment. ‘That’s Thiepval Wood, you know.’3

  My cry had awakened the Major. ‘Thiepval Wood and the dawn,’ he said in his curious loud voice. ‘The hour when the boys stood to.’4

  I stood by the window. The train crawled along. I was grateful for the noise it made. Thiepval Wood! Oh! Mon Dieu! ‘Hell must be like that,’ I said softly. ‘Yes – Hell must be like that.’

  The Major’s heavy hand descended on my arm. ‘Little Girl,’ said the Major deliberately, ‘I’ve fallen in love with you. Will you marry me?’

  I looked at him. ‘Mais tout de suite, monsieur,’ [‘right away, Monsieur,’] I replied at once. I have never answered a proposal half so speedily before or since.

  The Major produced his card. ‘My battery is at Valenciennes,’ he said. ‘You had better come there for a fortnight.’

  The Hut Lady looked anxiously over at me. Outside the window those grim grey ghastly trees had receded and the dawn had come. In the bitter light the land lay stark before us. Everything had been done to it that could be done. There was nothing new for it to learn. And yet, so does the mind shrink from dwelling on the blank horror of it all, that every time I call up the picture of Thiepval Wood and what had been its trees, I see again the patchy light falling cold and grey and the desolation that rose and overwhelmed me – but not these alone. Automatically there comes back to me the Major’s voice – in its unholy incongruity – though, indeed, nothing human seemed unholy then. I have a lurking feeling that I ought to be ashamed of the coincidence of the three – the wood, the dawn and the Major – but, at the time, the Major was a relief.

  ‘I waited till I could see your face,’ he explained later, ‘before I asked you to marry me.’ It seemed a sensible enough precaution, I thought.

  I remember little more till the train drew up at Arras, and the young subalterns busied themselves about helping us out, and telling us what to do. The Major had sunk back again in his corner – as it seemed – asleep. After his sudden proposal to me and his taking for granted that I should accompany him forthwith to Valenciennes, he had taken no further part in the conversation.

  ‘I think he is a lunatic and they are in charge of him,’ whispered the Hut Lady to me when we found ourselves alone.

  ‘Onl
y shell shock, I think,’ I said, guardedly. After all, I had no desire to admit that a man who had proposed to me – even after he had seen my face – must needs be a lunatic.

  There was not much left of Arras Station, which apparently had had a direct hit. And worse still, there was no RTO – at least not at first. But in a siding we found him, and his eyes opened wide as they fell on us.

  ‘Go to Vimy?’ he answered, ‘Why yes, of course. Down the Grande Rue, and the traffic man at the end of it will stop anything that passes and send you to Vimy. Or, if no lorry’s going, the ROD [Railway Operating Division] people will take you up on a light engine. Very glad to see you. Good morning.’

  It was between eight and nine in the morning when we turned into the Grande Rue. The houses were broken, of course – in some a wall had been torn sheer away and we looked into the privacy of every room, standing just as its owner had left it. Broken homes – but not deserted. We walked slowly and curiously, gazing at everything. Round the first corner, footsteps wheeled – then halted dead at the sight of us. ‘Good morning, Miss,’ a cheery voice rang out. We were used to that by now, though not to the tones of surprise – but the next moment a head popped out of a gap in the wall on the other side of the street, and another roar, ‘Good morning, Miss,’ greeted us.

  ‘He has wakened the street,’ I laughed to the Hut Lady and indeed he had. The houses seemed alive with English soldiers and undemonstrative though they are at home, they are incredibly otherwise up the line. Cries of ‘Welcome, welcome, welcome!’ rang in our ears. We looked from left to right in laughing greeting. Then a motor lorry met us. It drew up hard when it came to us: and the eager driver wanted to know if he could take us anywhere. I explained we wanted to go to Vimy and his face fell. ‘Down at the end of the street,’ he directed us. ‘The traffic man will put you right.’ Then with a lingering glance he sped away; we were not going his way. In the Grande Rue I met no French people – no doubt there were some, in the marred and broken houses, but they had long since stopped being interested in strangers.

  In the fresh morning air, it felt an unreal world. It could not be that those cries of delight, those shouts of welcome, were for us – two very ordinary Englishwomen walking down the street. Nobody had ever been so delighted to see us before – nobody ever would be again, that I knew quite well. Only in France could things happen like this.

  ‘You look like peace, Miss, you do,’ said one fervently, as we passed.

  At last we came to the traffic man. He stood where four roads meet, at the outskirts of the town. And one road led to Vimy. ‘You could go pretty near anywhere else, Miss,’ he said doubtfully, when I asked him, ‘but there won’t be a lorry for Vimy just yet, I’m thinking.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I said cheerily. ‘We’ll sit here and eat our breakfast first then. We’ve the whole day, you know.’ So we sat down on the ground and pulled out our bread and chocolate and had our breakfast. It was quite pleasant to eat in the open air, with a running entertainment going on all the while. For every two minutes a lorry or car of some description would draw up and be questioned by the traffic man as to where it was going. Each car looked at us with animation and interest, and then, as the traffic man shook his head, moved reluctantly away.

  At last there was an excited waving of hands, and the traffic man imperatively summoned us nearer. The car that was to have the honour of taking us to Vimy was an American Red Cross car, with the most uncommunicative driver I had ever struck. He did just say, ‘Pleased to take you, Miss,’ as we mounted the box beside him.

  The traffic man beneath was beaming. ‘Come back soon,’ he called to us, as the driver engaged the clutch and we bounded forward. The American’s eyes were on the horizon with the strained gaze of a pilot scanning a narrow channel.

  ‘You’re not going for wounded, are you?’ I enquired timidly and somewhat foolishly.

  ‘St Catherine,’ he said tersely, turning his eyes for a moment to what seemed a sea of ruins on our left.5 Our course lay in the midst of such, until we presently came to a stretch with camps on either side. ‘Balmoral Camp’ took my eye and turned my thoughts to home. Our presence on the box was a source of eager interest to the troops on either side. A wave of the hand, a cheery greeting, a smile and we were past.

  Then we came to open country and the road wound upwards. Stretches of barbed wire, gashes in the ground, trails of camouflage, sandbags in heaps, told us where we were. But they were far less noticeable than they had been from the railway. Our eyes commanded a wide stretch of country, sweeping away to the horizon. For miles all around the air was pure and sweet, and the horror of Thiepval seemed far behind. We saw nobody at all and it was hard to realise that so short ago this had been a battlefield for thousands. Only a lonely cross here and there – or a group of crosses – suggested it. I had begun to fear our American had forgotten all about us and was prepared to carry us to the end of the world when all at once, in the centre of the champaign [plain] and at its crest, he stopped.

  ‘This is the Ridge,’ he said. ‘I’m going on to Lens. Goodbye.’ Hardly waiting for our thanks, he whizzed off and we were alone.6

  The silence was unbroken; the land was desolate. Almost afraid to break the quiet, we moved on to the grass, and with a cry of delight, I stooped down and picked a flower. It was the commonest little yellow thing, which grows in unnoticed thousands at home, but I held it reverently and greedily and the Hut Lady looked at it too.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she said lingeringly, stroking it petal by petal. To find a flower after all that we had seen, seemed a miracle.

  We moved on and picked up bits of shells, bullets, stray bits of camouflage: all the odds and ends left over from the fighting. The Hut Lady, with more energy than I had, was plunging along a trench while I sat thinking on the parapet, when suddenly a voice said courteously at my side, ‘Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea?’

  If I had been a screaming person, I would have screamed then. I merely started violently and looked up. An English officer, in immaculate uniform, looked amusedly down at me. He held out a billy can in one hand. ‘Oh, thank you,’ I murmured, utterly tongue-tied.

  ‘Sorry there aren’t any cups,’ he went on, ‘but perhaps you will manage with this. My men always make tea just now. It’s eleven o’clock, you know.’

  The Hut Lady, hearing the sound of voices, appeared from her trench. She saw me and a strange officer each grasping one end of a billy can, as if in the act of plighting our troth. But she was not nearly as taken aback as I was.

  ‘Oh Tiny, how nice,’ she cried, scrambling up. ‘Is it actually tea?’

  It appeared that the officer, with another, and their men were engaged in clearing up the battle area and found the job rather monotonous. They were eager to show us all they could, when we had finished the tea.

  ‘You would like to go down a dugout, wouldn’t you?’ asked our guide affably. ‘I’ll take you down one of ours and one of the Boche’s. His are far the best, of course.’

  We scrambled down into a trench and he led the way. ‘Down here,’ he pointed. ‘Wait till I light the candle and watch out – the steps are rather slippery.’ Before us yawned a cavern, with an almost perpendicular staircase of dripping yellowish mud. I decided not to go first. The Hut Lady and the other officer went on, she chattering eagerly all the while. ‘Come along,’ said my friend, ‘it’s quite easy.’

  Helped and propped at elbow and shoulder, I managed to descend. A couple of bunks, like those in a steamer, confronted me on the right. They were very low roofed, very narrow and completely dark. Only the wavering light of the candle enabled me to see them at all.

  ‘Officers’ bunks,’ said the guide briefly. I shivered. ‘This is a topping big dugout,’ said my companion, in tones of admiration. ‘It has a passage right through, so that you can get out at the other side,’ and he proceeded to indicate a narrow tunnel in complete blackness, down which I saw the bent and disappearing forms of the Hut Lady and
her escort. Moreover, the candle was going with them, and in a minute I should see nothing.

  ‘I’m not going there,’ I cried out, ‘I’m not going there at all.’

  My companion looked blank. ‘It comes up the other side,’ he explained in bewilderment.

  ‘I’m not going,’ I repeated, ‘oh, please take me up before it gets dark.’

  He began to understand I was terrified, and though he was perfectly polite, he could not prevent a broad smile. ‘It won’t get dark,’ he said, comfortingly. ‘There’s always light from the trench, you know.’

  I was already back at the foot of the staircase. The coats left in the bunks no longer interested me, whether they were Boche or British. ‘Oh, there are these awful steps yet,’ I cried in dismay, as I faced the slithering yellow wall. ‘I don’t know how you ever summoned up the courage to come down here,’ I cried with a despairing wail, as I edged my way up.

  ‘Courage!’ he echoed indignantly. ‘Do you know this is one of the very finest dugouts and that you’d be jolly lucky to get to it. If you stayed up there, you’d be shelled.’

  By this time I was well ‘up there’ and even as I stumbled in the slippery ooze of the trench, I heaved a sigh of relief. ‘It’s awful,’ I said shortly, and we walked on in silence.7

  ‘Come, and I’ll show you a big gun emplacement – Boche,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘and then we’ll look at the Canadian memorial.’