My eyes had turned to the horizon again, to the heights that once were St Eloi. Someone I knew lay there, who had been a Canadian, and it was too far for me to go. I could only see the Ridge where he had been killed, and not the place where he lay.8 I went quietly to the big gun emplacement. It seemed untouched, and even to my inexperienced eyes, of amazing strength.
‘We got held up here I don’t know how long,’ he explained. ‘You see how well it is screened and how it commands all this stretch of ground.’
I wandered out in search of souvenirs when a sharp, ‘Don’t touch that!’ rang out. My hands were on a beautiful large shell case – or so I thought – with a bright red mark on it.
‘I can’t lift it anyhow,’ I said regretfully, still fingering it.
He tore my hands away. ‘Good God,’ he cried in – I suppose – justifiable indignation. ‘You’re afraid to go down the finest dugout on the Ridge and you play with an unexploded shell. Don’t you know what that red mark means?’
‘No,’ I said meekly, rather afraid of him now.
‘That it’s dangerous,’ he snapped, ‘not inspected yet by the Royal Engineers. This place is full of them. We’re only just beginning to clear up.’ We walked on in silence.
‘It must be wonderful to live up here,’ I ventured after a little. ‘So open, and you see such long distances and there’s nobody at all to disturb you.’
‘Jolly lonely sometimes,’ he returned. ‘Would you like to come up for a weekend?’
‘Like to come?’ I echoed. ‘I’d just love it, but we’ve only got four days. We must go back tomorrow.’
‘Put down those things you’re carrying,’ he said, glancing at my armful of spent bullets, bits of camouflage, bits of shells and flowers. ‘No one will touch them here and I’ll snap you at the foot of Canada’s cross.’
The great high cross, with Canada in white letters, stood high on the crest of the ridge. The bright March sunlight danced on the white letters and picked out with silver the grey cross. The keen March wind blew like the winds of home over all the quiet field. The Hut Lady and I sat in the shadow of the memorial and looked towards St Eloi.9
I have never seen the snapshots for, though our officer carefully took our names and addresses down on his map, he forgot to send them. It was quite natural that he should, I reflected afterwards, for, of all things in France, memory is the shortest. When we came down again, I searched for my treasures, but the little heap was gone. The officer, very perturbed, looked puzzled for a moment, and then he recollected. ‘Oh, there are Chinks hereabouts, clearing up,’ he told me. ‘They must have passed this way.’ We had seen and heard nothing, but I was getting used by now to people springing out of nowhere on this strange battlefield.
‘It’s like the Pilgrim’s Progress,’ I said suddenly. ‘Remember when Christian climbs the Hill, his burden falls away. I’m not sorry it’s gone now.’
The officer stared in some bewilderment. He had not been brought up on the Pilgrim’s Progress. ‘My men will gather you some things instead,’ he promised.
‘I wish we could stay up here, Tiny,’ said the Hut Lady wistfully, ‘while it is like this and before the tourists come. It would be such fun to sleep in those dugouts.’
I shivered. First Roisel and then Vimy – for a respectable English lady, the Hut Lady had most extraordinary tastes. ‘Now we’ll have to be getting back,’ I said regretfully. ‘I wonder if we can get a car.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the officer quickly, ‘there’s sure to be one if you come to the road – that’s if you must go.’
‘There’s only one thing I haven’t seen,’ I said slowly, as we went down towards the road.
‘What’s that? We’ll show it you,’ said my escort eagerly.
‘A dead Boche,’ I said. ‘I suppose you won’t show me that?’
‘No, I won’t,’ he said firmly. ‘You shouldn’t want to see that.’
My eyes strayed to the little lonely cemeteries, in their hundreds, all around us. The men who lay there were so far from Canada and had given up so much. There was the man who lay at St Eloi and who would never see Scotland again. I turned to my escort. ‘It’s the thing I want to see most,’ I said slowly, ‘and there’s many a woman would tell you that.’
His eyes were uncomprehending. ‘Disgusting,’ he said. ‘Now tell me when you’ll come back for a weekend.’
I laughed. We had not long to wait on the road. In a few moments a French motor lorry came rumbling along, and pulled up at the sight of us. We climbed up, bade our friends farewell, and whirled back to Arras. It was the first French driver I had been with, and after some debate, we decided to tip him. We had only once tried to tip an English soldier and the experience had been so devastating that we had never tried again. But when he let us down at Arras Cathedral, I handed him five francs which he accepted without a murmur and indeed as if he had expected more.
The shell of the cathedral still stood, in part, roofless, and with its interior heaped with stones and rubble. But, as a ruin, it seemed much more impressive and beautiful than, I think, it could have done when new. Especially so today, with the sky a vault of deepest blue bending over the grey stone. We clambered over the ruins till we faced the high altar which still stood unbroken. The great gaps torn in the walls by the hurricane of shells, yawned before us like gashes. The whole place was a living accusation against the evil in man. No wonder the French Government has decided to keep it as it is for a standing witness against the Boche.10
We were sitting eating our last scraps of bread and chocolate, when the vivid ‘horizon bleu’ struck in between us and the grey, and a small French Corporal with half a dozen of his men, stood before us. They saluted and eyed us curiously. I looked at the row of ribbons on the Corporal’s breast. ‘Vive l’Angleterre,’ began the Corporal encouragingly. It was his first remark. He was standing directly in front of me with his men grouped around him.
‘Vive la France, monsieur,’ I returned calmly, ‘et à bas les Boches.’ [‘down with the Boche’]
‘Ah! Les sales Boches,’ [‘Ah! The filthy Boche,’] he growled, looking round at the ruined cathedral. He was from the South, he told us, from Carcassonne, and all his fighting had been at Verdun; he and his men had got a few days’ leave to come up and see the North. They were like strange, shy children – not like grown men at all, I thought. And they had with them the poetry of the South. ‘I am glad,’ the Corporal told me gravely, ‘to meet Mademoiselle here,’ – and his gaze wandered round the ruined walls, and rested by the great high altar, in front of which we were. ‘It is right that England and France should be together here, and les sales Boches without – always without’ – his deep notes were like a curse.
I was surprised, indeed, at the fineness of the thought coming from a plain soldier; it seemed to me more like a visionary or a poet to picture England and France together before the altar in the heart of the battle zone! Yet here we were and behind the symbols he had caught the idea. A gang of Boche prisoners were working outside – he had seen them as he came in. The Hut Lady, looking more English than the English themselves, surveyed him suspiciously at this flight of imagination. She poked the stones with her umbrella in the hope, I think, of distracting him, though she said it was to look for souvenirs.
The Corporal produced his notebook. ‘If Mademoiselle would write her name and address,’ he begged. I did so gravely, and then he motioned to one of his men to ask the same of the Hut Lady.
At last, taking their great dark eyes away from us, they retired silently whence they had come. ‘Mark my words,’ said the Hut Lady with amusement, ‘an impassioned love letter will follow. You haven’t done so badly for one day, Tiny, first the Major and now the Corporal.’ Sure enough, the letter did come, even more fervent in tone than any I received from my lonely soldiers!
We wandered out of the cathedral and the Hut Lady shook her umbrella at the Boche soldiers labouring in the street. But for myself, I felt no anger as I looked
as them: I felt something worse, as if they were, what the Corporal had said, unclean, and as if I ought to draw my skirts aside as I passed them.
The sunlight still held as we made our way along the street. We wished to find the English military cemetery, in the hope of discovering some graves we knew. It appeared there were two cemeteries and we had only time for one. We chose at random and I asked a passing soldier to direct us. He told us minutely and we were not long in arriving. It was the largest cemetery we had seen and its crosses stretched back, row upon row, like a great army. I gazed around in despair. It was hopeless to discover anyone in this host, and we knew only names and regiments. But there was order even here. ‘The men are in years, Miss,’ said a soldier who was digging there. ‘If you know when he died, you’ll find him with his year.’
The Hut Lady took one corner and I another and we walked slowly down the line. One or two soldiers, who chanced to be there, tried to help us, but with wonderful tact, quietly slipped away and left us once they had learned the names we sought. They made no attempt to pursue conversation here. I thought I should never come to an end of the long ranks of 1916 – and there were two years still to come. Latterly I glanced only at the date. In this cemetery there were no flowers and nothing green at all. It was just a sea of the sticky tawny mud, with the crosses planted stark in it. Presently, as I bent to read the names and dates, I became aware that my feet were plunging deeper and deeper into the slime. As 1917 and 1918 grew nearer, the crosses rose from pools of yellow water, like miserable shell holes. Some crosses even stuck out slantingly as if the mud had pushed them aside from their usual ramrod straightness. The mud clung like glue: one sank in it almost as in quicksands. The last rows of crosses in this forlorn place were beyond my reach. I was glad to think that others would soon come who would master the mud and water, so that these last ranks might have their visitors too.
We turned back wearily and silently. It felt a dead weight to pull our shoes out of the mud and the road was far away. The crosses lay between us and that. But we reached the town at last and our thought was to make our way back to the station. As we turned into the Grande Rue, the soldier who had directed us, came up.
‘Did you find the place all right, Miss?’
I told him we had, but he still lingered. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Miss,’ he began again humbly, ‘I haven’t spoken to an English lady for nearly three years, and if you would just come and have a cup of tea at my billet, Miss,’ he glanced hesitatingly at us.
‘Thank you, we shall be delighted,’ I replied quickly, though I am sure the Hut Lady too felt we could hardly walk another step. And since three in the morning we had not been able to rest for a single moment. But our soldier wanted us to see the sights. Had we seen the Grande Place, or the Petite Place, or the wonderful cellars where the French people lived when the shelling was so bad?11 We obediently looked at the first two, and then I asked casually if there was a YMCA canteen near. It appeared there was and we begged to be taken there first. Alas! it was only a rough square hall of a place, with a wholly unimaginative padre in charge. He told us before we even spoke to him, that we could get nothing to eat or drink till the counter opened. No – there were no Hut Ladies at Arras – he smiled grimly from his side of the counter; as far as he knew, there were no English ladies in Arras at all.
‘Is there an Officers’ Club?’ I asked with a forlorn hope. There was certainly that. ‘Then we will go there,’ I said determinedly, making up my mind that not even a Field Marshal should bar me from its cloakroom. Our guide conducted us there, and we found – oh joy! – water and solitude, the two things we craved most. Ten minutes later, as with powdered noses and clean hands, we marched to our private soldier’s billet, I felt I could cope with anything.
The billet was on the ground floor of a broken house. It was a small room with a wooden floor and many boxes thereon. We sat each on a box – never was seat so grateful – and the soldier set about lighting a stove in the corner. I did not care how long he took to get tea, provided he let me sit on my box. The Hut Lady – more valiant than I, who am no campaigner – did most of the talking and heard most of the family history of the soldier and much of interest about Arras too. I daresay I must have heard it all too, but I remember nothing now but the stray fact that a Divisional Footlights Company was giving an excellent performance in the theatre that night, and our friend was begging us to stay for it. He assured us we would be the only Englishwomen there – indeed the only women in the theatre and that we would bring the house down. I sigh now to think of what I might once have done, but then all I felt was relief when the Hut Lady announced that we had to get back to Amiens that night.
Tea came in the end and I woke up to see the thinnest bread and butter I had yet seen in France and a tea tray as immaculate and dainty as might be found in an English drawing room. Our host did not drink with us, but looking for snapshots, telling stories, answering the Hut Lady’s questions, set us completely at our ease with that marvellous thoughtfulness for others that the English private soldier always had. It was only towards the end of tea – when I was becoming interested again in my surroundings – that his eyes fell on my shoes. He gave a little cry of distress. ‘Oh, if only I had thought,’ he cried, ‘I would have brushed your shoes for you, before you went to the train. But there’s hardly time now,’ he added regretfully – then brightening, ‘unless you’ll wait for another train.’
The Hut Lady looked at my shoes too – severely. She had not waded and jumped in the cemetery as I had and you could still see she wore shoes. But up to my knees my feet were embedded in what felt like yellow plaster of Paris. I surveyed them against the box with quite considerable pride. ‘I should like to go home like this,’ I said. ‘Everybody’d know where I’d been then.’
‘You’ll be dead beat, walking in that,’ said the Hut Lady darkly.
I didn’t care – our day’s work was done and we were going back to Amiens and to bed. I felt that Heaven itself could only be expressed in terms of beds. A bed, moreover, where I could sleep till eight a.m. – if even the Archangel Michael were to waken me before then I should not get up.
Whilst these thoughts passed in my mind, we were on our way to the station, the Hut Lady and our soldier in front, I trudging along behind. At the station I presented our passes to Madame at the guichet. ‘Militaire,’ she said, quite civilly, but firmly, ‘pas avant minuit,’ and handed them back. I gasped. [‘Military, … not before midnight’]
‘Mais il y a un train tout de suite,’ [‘But there’s a train now’] I protested.
‘Mais oui,’ she agreed, but ‘militaires’ could not go by it. It required the permission of Monsieur le RTO français. I looked wildly round for him. She pointed out a little wooden hut, with a queue of blue uniforms outside. I dashed across; the train might come at any moment. Monsieur le RTO was busy – he was a fat man, with black eyes and a huge black moustache. He looked somewhat fearsome. A gallery of minor RTOs stood round him and I had boldly placed myself at the head of the queue.
‘S’il vous plaît, monsieur,’ I began falteringly, ‘s’il vous plait,’ … and stopped.
‘Eh, bien, mademoiselle,’ he encouraged me.
I handed him our passes, with my finger on the left-hand corner. ‘Quelque chose de gentil ici-bas, s’il vous plaît, monsieur,’ [Something kind here, please, monsieur’,] I wheedled, for it was a matter of minutes now. ‘Qu’est-ce-que c’est?’ [what’s this?’] he enquired blankly, at the same time scanning the document.
I explained how Madame at the guichet had said his signature was necessary. The blue uniforms listened with lively interest; the Staff directed a concentrated stare on me. There was a moment’s silence when you could have heard a pin fall. Then the Chief raised his eyes and fixed them on me, ‘Vous n’avez pas le droit de l’avoir,’ he told me and my heart sank to my boots, ‘et je n’ai pas le droit de le faire, et,’ he added, reaching for an enormous iron stamping machine and thumping it down
, ‘et je vais le faire!’ [‘You don’t have any right to this … and I have no right to do this … and I’m going to do it!’] He handed me the passes and smilingly saluted.
I stared – then said, ‘Mille remerciments, monsieur; je vous remercie de tout mon coeur.’ [‘A thousand thank yous, monsieur, I thank you with all my heart.’] To which he replied, ‘A votre service, mlle.’ With a bow and a smile I ran from the hut. Not without quick laughter from the queue of poilus and a parting cry of ‘Vive l’Angleterre!’
With many thanks to the English soldier, we whirled into the waiting express. It was crammed full, and passing along the corridor, we found a compartment of American soldiers with only the corner seats taken. They gave us no greeting, made no effort to dispose their kit more comfortably for us, and after about half an hour, neither the Hut Lady nor I could very well keep our eyes open as we sat bolt upright in the centre. During all our sojourn in France this incident stands out as the only instance we ever met with of lack of thoughtfulness to us from soldiers. They were, I repeat, American. Despite our uniforms, the mud on our shoes and the weariness of our attitudes, they let us sit the whole way, while, fresh from Paris leave, they lolled in their corners. At Longueau, where we had to get out, the carriage door would hardly open and when it did, there was a very considerable leap to the ground. But it was a middle-aged Frenchman who came to our aid there. The Americans sat fast and did nothing. And so back to Amiens and our Australian friend, who sauntered up to us at the station and carried our souvenirs home. He was like an old friend now, instead of an acquaintance of a few days. And then to bed, without sheets, in grey Army blankets – the best bed of all!
Next morning, with reluctant faces, we set out for the Base and everyday life again. It was like bidding farewell to a dreamworld, where everything happened after the heart’s desire on a background of infinite horror. Never again shall I visit the zone of the Armies, first because to see a land so wronged by the hand of man, shames one to the soul. Indeed, it leaves no soul, but shame.
War Classics Page 17
