The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston 1 - Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man

by Siegfried Sassoon

  When riding alone I explored the country rather absentmindedly, meditating on the horrors which I had yet to experience; I was unable to reconcile that skeleton certainty with the serenities of this winter landscape – clean-smelling, with larks in the sky, the rich brown gloom of distant woods, and the cloud shadows racing over the lit and dappled levels of that widespread land. And then I would pass a grey-roofed chateau, with its many windows and no face there to watch me pass. Only a bronze lion guarding the well in the middle of an overgrown lawn, and the whole place forlorn and deserted. Once as I was crossing the main road from Abbeville to Beauvais, I watched the interminable column of a French army corps which was moving southward. For the first time I saw the famous French field-guns – the ‘75’s’.

  But even then it wasn’t easy to think of dying…. Still less so when Dick was with me, and we were having an imitation hunt. I used to pretend to be hunting a pack of hounds, with him as my whipper-in. Assuming a Denis Milden manner (Denis was at Rouen with the cavalry and likely to remain there, in spite of the C.O.’s assumptions about open warfare) I would go solemnly through a wood, cheering imaginary hounds. After an imaginary fox had been found, away we’d scuttle, looking in vain for a fence to jump, making imaginary casts after an imaginary check, and losing our fox when the horses had done enough galloping. An imaginary kill didn’t appeal to me, somehow. Once, when I was emerging rapidly from a wood with loud shouts, I came round a corner and nearly knocked the Brigadier off his horse. He was out for a ride with his staff-captain; but no doubt he approved of my sporting make-believe, and I didn’t dare to stop for apologies, since the Brigadier was a very great man indeed. Dick enjoyed these outings enormously and was much impressed by my hunting noises. The black mare seemed to enjoy it also.

  Thus, in those delusive surroundings, I reverted fictitiously to the jaunts and jollities of peace time, fabricating for my young friend a light-hearted fragment of the sport which he had not lived long enough to share. It was queer, though, when we met some of the black-bearded Bengal Lancers who were quartered in one of the neighbouring villages. What were they doing among those wooded ridges, with the little roads winding away over the slopes toward a low yellow sunset and the nowhere of life reprieved to live out its allotted span?

  Christmas came – a day of disciplined insobriety – and the First Battalion entered 1916 in a state of health and happiness. But it was a hand-to-mouth happiness, preyed upon by that remote noise of artillery; and as for health – well, we were all of us provisionally condemned to death in our own thoughts and if anyone had been taken seriously ill and sent back to ‘Blighty’ he would have been looked upon as lucky. For anybody who allowed himself to think things over, the only way out of it was to try and feel secretly heroic, and to look back on the old life as pointless and trivial. I used to persuade myself that I had ‘found peace’ in this new life. But it was a peace of mind which resulted from a physically healthy existence combined with a sense of irresponsibility. There could be no turning back now; one had to do as one was told. In an emotional mood I could glory in the idea of the supreme sacrifice.

  But where was the glory for the obscure private who was always in trouble with the platoon sergeant and got ‘medicine and duty’ when he went to the medical officer with rheumatism? He had enlisted ‘for the duration’ and had a young wife at home. It was all very well for Colonel Winchell to be lecturing in the village schoolroom on the offensive spirit, and the spirit of the regiment, but everyone knew that he was booked for a brigade, and some said that he’d bought a brigadier’s gold-peaked cap last time he was on leave.

  When I instructed my platoon, one or two evenings a week, I confined myself to asking them easy questions out of the infantry training manual, saying that we had got to win the War (and were certain to) and reading the League Football news aloud. I hadn’t begun to question the rights and wrongs of the War then; and if I had, nothing would have been gained by telling my platoon about it – apart from the grave breach of discipline involved in such heart-searchings.

  Early in the New Year the first gas-masks were issued. Every morning we practised putting them on, transforming ourselves into grotesque goggle-faced creatures as we tucked the grey flannel under our tunics in flustered haste. Those masks were an omen. An old wood-cutter in high leather leggings watched us curiously, for we were doing our gas-drill on the fringe of the forest, with its dark cypresses among the leafless oaks and beeches, and a faint golden light over all.

  One Sunday in January I got leave to go into Amiens. (A rambling train took an hour and a half to do the eighteen-mile journey.) Dick went with me. After a good lunch we inspected the Cathedral, which was a contrast to the life we had been leading. But it was crowded with sight-seeing British soldiers; the kilted ‘Jocks’ walked up and down the nave as if they had conquered France, and I remember seeing a Japanese officer flit in with curious eyes. The long capes which many of the soldiers wore gave them a mediaeval aspect, insolent and overbearing. But the background was solemn and beautiful. White columns soared into lilies of light, and the stained-glass windows harmonized with the chanting voices and the satisfying sounds of the organ. I glanced at Dick and thought what a young Galahad he looked (a Galahad who had got his school colours for cricket).

  Back in the company mess at Montagne we found the Quartermaster talking to Barton, who was looking none too bright, for old Joe seemed to think that we might be moving back to the Line any day now.

  Young Ormand had got his favourite record going on his little gramophone. That mawkish popular song haunts me whenever I am remembering the War in these afterdays:

  And when I told them how wonderful you were,

  They wouldn’t believe me; they wouldn’t believe me;

  Your hands, your eyes, your lips, your hair,

  Are in a class beyond compare….

  and so on. His records were few, and all were of a similar kind. I would have liked to hear a Handel violin sonata sometimes; there was that one which Kreisler had played the first time I heard him…. And I’d have liked to hear Aunt Evelyn playing ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’, on that Sunday evening when we began to pull ourselves together for ‘the Line’…. In her last letter she had said how long the winter seemed, in spite of being so busy at the local hospital. She was longing for the spring to come again. ‘Spring helps one so much in life.’ (In the spring, I thought, the ‘Big Push’ will begin.) Her chief bit of news was that Dixon was in France. Although he had enlisted in the Army Veterinary Corps he was now attached to the Army Service Corps, and was a sergeant. ‘He seems quite happy, as he has charge of a lot of horses,’ she wrote. I wondered whether there was any chance of my seeing him, but it seemed unlikely. Anyhow, I would try to find out where he was, as soon as I knew where our division was going. Dottrell thought we were for the Somme trenches, which had lately been taken over from the French.

  But before we left Montagne Colonel Winchell sent for me and told me to take over the job of Transport Officer. This was an anti-climax, for it meant that I shouldn’t go into the trenches. The late Transport Officer had gone on leave, and now news had come that he had been transferred to a reserve battalion in England. Mansfield remarked that God seemed to watch over some people. He seemed to be watching over me too. Everyone in ‘C’ company mess expressed magnanimous approval of my appointment, which was considered appropriate, on account of my reputation as a fox-hunting man. I entered on my new duties with ‘new-broom’ energy. And the black mare was now mine to ride every day. For the time being I remained with ‘C’ company mess, but when we got to the Line I should live with Dottrell and the Interpreter. It was a snug little job which would have suited Barton down to the ground.

  There was one thing which worried me; I disliked the idea of Dick going into the front line while I stayed behind. I said so, and he told me not to be an old chump. So we had a last ride round the woods, and the next morning, which was raw and foggy, we turned our backs on the little vill
age. The First Battalion never had such a peaceful eight weeks again for the remainder of the War.

  We crossed the Somme at Picquigny: after that we were in country unknown to us. I rode along with the rattle and rumble of limber and wagon wheels, watching the patient dun-coloured column winding away in front; conscious of what they were marching to, I felt myself strongly identified with this queer community, which still contained a few survivors from the original Expeditionary Force battalion which had ‘helped to make history’ at Ypres in October, 1914. Most of the old soldiers were on the strength of the Transport, which numbered about sixty.

  On the roll of the Transport were drivers, officers’ grooms, brakesmen, and the men with the nine pack animals which carried ammunition. Then there was the transport-sergeant (on whose efficiency my fate depended), his corporal, and a farrier-corporal; and those minor specialists, the shoeing-smith, saddler, carpenter, and cook. Our conveyances were the G.S. wagon (with an old driver who took ceaseless pride in his horses and the shining up of his steelwork), the mess wagon (carrying officers’ kits, which were strictly limited in weight), the company cookers (which lurched cumbersomely along with the men’s dinners stewing away all the time), the watercart, and a two-wheeled vehicle known as ‘the Maltese cart’ (which carried a special cargo connected with the Quartermaster’s stores and was drawn by an aged pony named Nobbie). There were also the limbers, carrying the machine-guns and ammunition.

  The transport-sergeant was a Herefordshire man who could easily be visualized as a farmer driving to market in his gig. The C.O. had told me that the transport had been getting rather slack and needed smartening up; but I was already aware that Dottrell and the transport-sergeant could have managed quite easily without my enthusiastic support; they knew the whole business thoroughly, and all I could do was to keep an eye on the horses, which were a very moderate assortment, though they did their work well enough.

  So far I have said next to nothing about the officers outside my own company, and there is nothing to be said about them while they are on their way to the Line, except that their average age was about twenty-five, and that I had known the majority of them at Clitherland. It was a more or less untried battalion which marched across the Somme that misty morning. But somehow its original spirit survived, fortified by those company sergeant-majors and platoon sergeants whose duties were so exacting; how much depended on them only an ex-infantry officer can say for certain; according to my own experience, everything depended on them. But the Army was an interdependent concern, and when the Brigadier met us on the road Colonel Winchell’s face assumed a different expression of anxiety from the one which it wore when he was riding importantly up and down the column with the Adjutant at his heels. (The Adjutant, by the way, became a Roman Catholic priest after the War, and it doesn’t surprise me that he felt the need for a change of mental atmosphere.) The Brigadier, in his turn, became a more or less meek and conciliatory man when he encountered the Divisional General. And so on, up to Sir John French, who had lately been replaced by Sir Douglas Haig.

  We went thirteen miles that day. I remember, soon after we started on the second day, passing the end of an avenue, at the far end of which there was an enticing glimpse of an ancient château. My heart went out to that château: it seemed to symbolize everything which we were leaving behind us. But it was a bright morning, and what had I got to complain about, riding cockily along on my one-eyed mare while Dick was trudging in front of his platoon?…

  On the third day, having marched thirty-three miles altogether, we entered Morlancourt, a village in the strip of undulating landscape between the Somme and the Ancre rivers. This was our destination (until the next day, when the troops went up to the trenches, which were four or five miles away). It was an ominous day, but the sun shone and the air felt keen; as we marched down to Morlancourt a flock of pigeons circled above the roofs with the light shining through their wings. It was a village which had not suffered from shell-fire. Its turn came rather more than two years afterwards.

  We were all kept busy that afternoon: Barton and the other company commanders were harassed by continuous ‘chits’ from battalion H.Q. and, as young Ormand remarked when he came to leave his gramophone in my care, ‘everyone had fairly got the breeze up’. The only person who showed no sign of irritability was the Quartermaster, who continued to chaff M. Perrineau, with whom he stumped about the village mollifying everyone and putting difficulties to rights.

  Late in the evening I was sent off to a hamlet a mile away to find out (from the billeting officer of the New Army battalion we were relieving next day) certain details of routine connected with the transport of rations to the Line. This billeting officer recognized me before I remembered who he was. His name was Regel (which he now pronounced Regal). I had forgotten his existence since we were at school together. He now dictated his methodical information, and when I had finished scribbling notes about ‘water-trolley horses’, ‘mule-stable just beyond first barricade’, and so on, we talked for a while about old days.

  ‘How’s your cousin Willie?’ I asked, for want of anything else to say. His chubby face looked embarrassed, and he replied (in a low voice, for there were two other officers in the room), ‘He’s on the other side – in the artillery.’…

  I remembered then that Willie (a very nice boy) had always gone home to Hanover for the holidays. And now he might be sending a five-nine shell over at us for all we, or he, knew. It was eleven o’clock when I got back to Morlancourt. Dottrell was having a glass of rum and hot water before turning in. He had already found out all the details which I had scribbled in my notebook.

  4

  Morlancourt was tucked away among the fold of long slopes and bare ridges of ploughland. Five roads entered the village and each road, in its friendly convergence with the others, had its little crop of houses. There was a church with a slated tower and a gilt vane, round which birds wheeled and clacked. In the hollow ground in the middle, where the five roads met, there was a congregation of farm buildings round an open space with a pond on one side of it. It seemed a comfortable village when one looked down on its red and grey roofs and its drab and ochre walls.

  The long lines of the high ground hid the rest of the world: on the ridge one saw a few straggling trees, a team of greys ploughing or dredging, and some horsemen or a hooded farm-cart moving along the white edge of the skyline. The wind piped across the open, combing the thorn bushes which grew under high banks, and soughing in isolated plane trees and aspens. It was a spacious landscape of distant objects delicately defined under an immense sky. The light swept across it in a noble progress of wind and cloud, and evening brought it mystery and sadness. At night the whole region became a dusk of looming slopes with lights of village and bivouac picked out here and there, little sparks in the loneliness of time. And always the guns boomed a few miles away, and the droning aeroplanes looked down on the white seams of the reserve trench lines with their tangle of wires and posts.

  Here, while the battalion began its ‘tours of trenches’ (six days in and four days out), I had my meals comfortably with mild M. René Perrineau and Joe Dottrell. I slept in a canvas hut close to the transport lines, falling asleep to the roar and rattle of trench warfare four miles away, and waking to see, on sunny mornings, the shadows of birds flitting across my canvas roof, and to hear the whistling of starlings from the fruit trees and gables of the farm near by. After breakfast I would sit for a while reading a book by the fire in Dottrell’s billet, while the soldier cook sang ‘I want to go to Michigan’ at the top of his voice about three yards away. But however much he wanted to go to Michigan, he was lucky not to be in the trenches, and so was I; and I knew it as I toddled down to the transport lines to confer with Sergeant Hoskins about getting some carrots and greenstuff for the horses and indenting for some new nosebags and neckpieces for the limber harness. Some of the horses were looking hidebound, and I promised the sergeant that I’d buy a couple of hundredweight of linseed for
them when I went on leave. Linseed was a cosy idea; it reminded me of peacetime conditions.

  Our serious activities began after lunch. At half-past two I mounted the black mare, and old Joe soused himself into the saddle of his pony Susan (a veteran who had sustained a shrapnel wound on the near hip at the first battle of Ypres) and the transport moved off along the Bray road with the rations for the battalion. As the days lengthened the expedition started later, for we couldn’t go beyond Bray until after dusk. It was a roundabout journey of seven miles and if we started at three we were never home before ten. But home we came, to find Monsieur Perrineau solacing himself with Ormand’s gramophone: ‘But when I told them how wonderful you were’ or ‘Just a little love, a little kiss’. (Perrineau was hoping to go on leave soon, and his wife was waiting from him at Pau.)

  There were times when I felt that I ought to be somewhere else; I always went up to see my company, and when they were in the front line I was reluctant to leave them. One night (during the second time they were in) I arrived while our batteries were busily retaliating after a heavy afternoon bombardment by the Germans. I had some difficulty in getting up to the front line as the communication trenches were badly knocked about. But I found the five ‘C’ company officers none the worse for having been ‘strafed’ with trench-mortars, and my visit seemed to cheer them. I came home across the open country that night (which saved three miles) and it was a relief to leave it all behind me – the waterlogged trenches, and men peering grimly at me from under their round helmets: riding home there was friendly gloom around me, while the rockets soared beyond the ridge and the machine-guns rattled out their mirthless laughter. I left the mare to find her way to the gap in the reserve trench line: she never hesitated though she had only been up that way once by daylight. I was seeing the War as a looker-on, it seemed.