A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  It was the message from Colonel Mowbray which had disturbed the brigadier and his brigade major, the effect of which Phillip had observed, when they had looked at the trench map on the table. Colonel Mowbray had reported that the enemy wire north and south of Lone Tree was still intact after the bombardment.

  *

  The guide stopped before a dugout, which went down ten feet under the surface. It had a roof of timber baulks and bags, with an air-space to act as cushion in the central layers. Sods on the top hid the bags of chalk.

  Colonel Mowbray was sitting at a table reading Malory’s Mort d’Arthur. He put down the book when Phillip entered.

  “I have to report that zero hour is at five-fifty ack emma, sir,” said Phillip, saluting. “And may I show you a copy of the gas time-table?”

  “Thank you,” replied the colonel, quietly. “Sit down, won’t you.” He examined the time-table; looked up and said, “How is the wind?”

  “Almost nil, sir, but what there is, is moving north-east by east.”

  “Can you tell me what the effect of our final bombardment will have, particularly as regards the low-trajectory eighteen-pounders, on a slowly moving gas cloud?”

  “They will tend to disturb, it, sir, and so break it up,” replied Phillip hurriedly.

  “Will they carry forward, or impede, the cloud?”

  “They will tend to carry it forward, sir,” he said, trying to appear as though he had not made up the reply.

  “I see. Now when the cloud reaches the enemy’s wire and front trenches, will the bombardment disperse the gas, owing to the heat of the explosions?”

  “Yes, sir. But the gas, being heavier than air, will settle again.”

  “Thank you.” The colonel looked at his watch. “The time is now twenty minutes past four. In one hour and thirty minutes you will be discharging your gas?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are your cylinders intact?”

  “They were when I saw them last, sir.”

  “When was that?”

  “Between eight and nine o’clock, I mean pip emma, sir.”

  “Where have you been meanwhile?”

  “Waiting at brigade headquarters, sir, to be told the hour of zero, and for the revised time-table. I was ordered to be there at ten pip emma.”

  “You have had to wait a long time. Well, I must not keep you. You are going to your emplacements now, are you? Goodbye, and good luck!”

  *

  The wet night was turning, with a rise of temperature, towards the dawn, soon to reveal a morning of mist and drizzle in places, to cast the first wan light of day upon innumerable watery boot-marks left by those who, having said goodbye to life, were now become spectral to themselves and to one another, grey with fear, barren with the thoughts of men whose lives might soon be taken from them.

  *

  It was eerie to be passing men trying to sleep in all attitudes in the reserve trench; and coming to the communication trench marked UP, Phillip went on to the front line. Here it was likewise crowded with men in sagging attitudes, heads bowed over knees and resting on elbows, faces hidden away from dreadful thoughts of aloneness and obliteration. He passed by the half-sleeping, the thought of Captain West guiding him. When he reached the shelter, all within was quiet and dark. The orderly sitting on a box just inside the blanket whispered that the captain was asleep.

  “He told me to wake ’im when you come back, sir. He’s only bin down to it an hour. He was out acrost to the Jerry wire, and then with the colonel until nearly two, sir. Shall I wake him, sir?”

  “No, let him sleep. I’ll go and see my chaps, and come back later.”

  He was about to go out when Captain West’s voice said, “Don’t you ever obey orders, Phillip? Where have you been? Come and tell me. When does the balloon go up? How’s the wind?”

  “Zero is 5.50. I’ve told your C.O. Wind is fairly faint. There’s also a revised time-table for the gas discharge. I haven’t read it yet. I’ve got to give a copy to each sergeant in charge of my emplacements.”

  “Let me see.”

  Captain West rose on an elbow, switched on his electric torch.

  “God’s teeth, my eyes are seeing double. Read it out.”

  “Zero to 0.12 minutes, six cylinders gas

  0.12 to 0.20 minutes, four smoke candles

  0.20 to 0.32 minutes, six cylinders gas

  0.38 to 40 minutes, two triple smoke candles

  0.40 minutes—Assault!”

  “So we go over at half past six,” said West. “Boon! Bring tea, hot, thick, and no sugar this time. I’ve got a mouth like the bottom of a parrot’s cage. So they’ve changed the plans again.”

  “Yes. The original idea was thirty-eight minutes of gas right off, to use up the German helmets, including a second dip in the hypo. They last for fifteen minutes only, without a re-dip. Thirty-eight minutes of gas, then the smoke cloud for the final two minutes, to give the infantry complete cover from view. This new arrangement isn’t so good, in my opinion.”

  “It’s to get the main body of Hun troops out of their deep dugouts, when they see the smoke, to meet our assault, then to catch them in our final bombardment,” replied Captain West. “But if the Hun doesn’t come out until the guns lift, and if furthermore, my lad, your gas doesn’t put him down, we’ll be for the high jump again. For, I will tell in strict confidence, the gunners haven’t cut the wire along our front.”

  “Good God!”

  “Not a word, mind,” said Captain West, through clenched teeth.

  Phillip was startled to realise that the great “Spectre” West was afraid. The revelation gave him, in the same moment, the thought that what Westy could do, he could also do. In this extraordinary feeling of having shed his old feeble self, he said, “It says here that local commanders may give orders to run the gas concurrently with the smoke, if necessary, so if you like I can easily let it all off in the thirty-eight minutes. That will saturate their masks. I think it must have been your report I heard the brigadier discussing. Is the German wire intact two hundred yards north of Lone Tree, to three hundred south of it?”

  “Yes. What did he say?”

  “That he’d ring ‘B.G.R.A.’ at corps, whoever that was.”

  “Brigadier-general of gunners. What happened?”

  “He changed his mind, and rang ‘G.S.O. One, Division’.”

  “Well? Hurry up! You’re too damned slow!”

  “I didn’t hear any more.”

  Captain West said sharply, “Not a word about this outside, or to any of my subalterns, mind!” in such a tone of command that Phillip automatically said, “No, sir!”

  Then, after a pause, he said, “Well, I think I’ll get along to my emplacements, and warn the N.C.O.s in charge of the change of time-table.”

  “Come back here when you have done so. I may have something to say about how you release your gas, and blast every staff wallah! Boon! Hold that tea back until Mr. Maddison returns. I’m now going to sleep for half an hour. Shut up, you bloody thing!” he shouted at the alarm clock, ticking loudly on the table as it lay on its face in disgrace. Captain West covered it with his balaclava helmet, before rolling upon the bed again and pulling the blanket over his head. But not to sleep. He lay in the darkness fighting to overcome a picture of men bunching in front of thick rusty wire until cut down by the screeching blast of machine-guns firing at point-blank range. He clenched his hands, drew up his knees, made himself rigid as he tried to dissolve the picture; but always it reformed itself before his closed eyes, to the loud ticking of idiot Time.

  *

  Phillip moved along the assembly trench, passing company after company of men in all attitudes of unquiet sleep and quiet despair, huddled on duckboards or leaning against chalk-bagged walls of each traverse. Sentries stood in the fire-bays, patient and thoughtful as they took moments of privacy with shut eyes, with subdued sighs. Through the damp and stagnant air, in the hour before dawn when the thoughts of waking men,
in peace or war, are often catastrophic, the body vacant of soul, Phillip moved among herded men, his slow progress revealed by the wan light from a torch whose glass lens he held between his fingers. Strange thoughts of his new self passed in his mind; he was commanding men; he was one of those superior beings to whom men looked, as having power over their lives. It was a surprising thought that he, Phillip Maddison, could stand up to real officers like Captain West, M.C.; could speak to staff officers as an equal. How remote seemed his old self, that used to feel small in the presence of such people as Captain Whale, Major Fridkin, and Lieutenant Brendon, who had remarked, with slight contempt, “As a soldier, Maddison is in that state known as non est.”

  He was sweating when he reached the first emplacement, to hear the sergeant say, “I thought perhaps you’d copped it, sir,” to which the reply, “Oh, no, I’m too wicked to die just yet,” while Cranmer’s face seemed to be upon his own, strangely. He left a time-table sheet, and pushed his way on to the next emplacement, while telling himself there was no need for hurry, there was a full hour before the balloon went up. The strain ended only when he had come to the last emplacement; then a further anxiety developed when the sergeant, asking to speak in private with him, said, “I don’t like the look of this quiet air, sir. The men are saying that the gas will hang about, and they’d rather go over the bags without it. If you’ll excuse my saying it, sir.”

  “Of course, naturally. I’m going back to my Number One emplacement now, and shall be in telephonic communication with brigade, and will send word if the plans are changed. Meanwhile, unless you hear from me, you will carry on with the time-table I’ve given you.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “I’ll be round to see you again, in any case, before the boys go over.” He turned to go back.

  “Sir!”

  “Yes?”

  “The infantry’s talking of the wire not being cut, I mean the jerry wire, sir, along by the Lone Tree. I thought I’d tell you, sir, just in case——”

  “That’s been taken care of, Sergeant. I was at brigade when the report came through, an hour or two back, and the gunners will attend to it.”

  “Very good, sir. Is there any harm in telling the boys?”

  Phillip hesitated. Then, remembering what Westy had said to him, “Rather not. See you later, Sergeant.”

  *

  By 5 a.m. it was growing light. General Sir Douglas Haig walked outside his château, into what was almost a calm. With him was his senior A.D.C.

  “Light a cigarette, will you, Fletcher.”

  The smoke drifted in little puffs towards the north-east. The two men stood still. The commander of the first Army did not speak; his aide kept the cigarette down, while holding himself in pliant immobility, emptying himself of thought, lest he disturb the general.

  At 9.20 p.m. on the previous evening Sir Douglas Haig had ordered the general offensive with gas confidently; but owing to possible variance of the wind, staff officers of corps had been ordered to wait by their telephones to receive instructions. Without gas, owing to the insufficiency of heavy artillery, the attack would suffer heavy losses, and had small hope of success; furthermore, the enemy, from his superior observation posts in pit-head tower and spoil-heap, would be able to direct devastating gun-fire on troops massed in the front trenches, and in crowded communication trenches, if an attempt was made to withdraw the infantry of the four divisions not required for the limited alternative attack.

  A few minutes after 5 a.m. the wind began to move slightly. At 5.15 a.m. General Haig gave the order to carry on, and then climbed to the top of his wooden look-out tower, to think alone. While time passed slowly as the wind he began to fear that the gas would hang about the British trenches. He bore himself up under the grave responsibility with the aid of prayer for guidance, a man seeking clarity within his own soul.

  While he stood there one of his staff telephoned to the commander of the First Corps. When Lieutenant-General Gough replied, he asked, “Is it possible to stop the arrangements for the attack, General?”

  “The gas is due to be turned on within half an hour,” said General Gough. “I do not consider it practicable to get word in time to the front trenches and to all the batteries concerned. Therefore, I am of the opinion that it is now too late to cancel the arrangements for the attack.”

  By 5.40 a.m. the First Army commander felt a less heavy weight upon his spirit, when a slight breeze sprang up and rustled the poplar leaves in the green country behind the coal-fields. But a weight remained on his mind; for he had no immediate reserves to exploit a break-through should this happen in the morning. He had asked for the reserve divisions to be put in his immediate rear as soon as the assault took place; but to all his requests Field-marshal Sir John French had replied that he would keep the general reserve for the battle under his personal command, and await events before ordering them to move forward.

  With the exception of the Guards Division, and the Cavalry Corps, the divisions of the general reserve were all untried troops, who had only recently arrived in France from England. The field-marshal had several reasons for keeping them back; Sir Douglas Haig knew only one reason why they should be well-up at the moment of assault.

  *

  Behind the trenches, artillery observers sitting in their sandbagged posts were waiting, in calm excitement, headphones to ears. The battery commanders had received orders to be prepared to move out of their pits at the shortest possible notice.

  Along the British line all was quiet; but from the south, from behind the ridge of Nôtre Dame de Lorette came the subdued deep roar with flickers as of distant lightning where the French had been fighting round Souchez and the strong German redoubt of the Labyrinthe continuously for the past week.

  The gunners were now standing-to, in the gun-pits of batteries pointing into the whitening east: the great howitzers with blunt barrels rising steeply up; the long and comparatively slender high-velocity guns; the eighteen-pounder field-guns with their horses picketed a couple of hundred yards in the rear, waiting to hook-in and go forward over the prepared wooden bridges. Thousands of gunner-officers were imagining, again and again, the thrilling order of Hook your lanyards!, then Fire! as slowly the hands of watches passed the half-hour mark, and crept to the three-quarter-hour mark, and the small ticking behind luminous dials became heart-beats thumping in ears.

  *

  Captain West’s company headquarters was alive when Phillip returned. Equipped for battle, bombs hung on webbing braces, revolvers oiled, gas-masks rolled on heads under shapeless trench-caps from which badges were removed, platoon commanders were taking last looks at their maps. Their runners stood outside, holding yellow flags on sticks, to mark the boundaries of the advance for the artillery observers hidden up chimneys, in house lofts, and on haystacks behind the series of chalk seams cut in the level-seeming pan between the groups of fosses or puits held by the British and those on higher ground occupied by the Germans.

  Ladders were in position, to scale parapets; the new Lewis gun-teams held fast to their hollow black weapons.

  Boon the servant brought hot mugs of tea. Shakily the captain poured whiskey into each. Then he sat down suddenly, as though hit, on the edge of his wire-net bed. From there he lit a second candle, putting it in front of the alarm clock now upright on the table. As the flame rose up, Time became his enemy. He put the clock between him and the stump, complaining, “God’s teeth, that blasted light stabs my eyeballs.” He gulped the contents of his mug. “This tea is cold, dammit.” Then, “What’s the time?”

  “Four minutes to go, skipper.”

  Captain West sprang off the bed, and touching Phillip on the shoulder said quietly, “Come with me.”

  Phillip followed him through the blanket, damp with liquid from the Vermorel sprayer, and out past men standing up in a sickly light, ominous with rain that hung everywhere in threat above the dead-white parapet. Some were smoking; a few talking; but all were silent as they watched
the two officers climbing two scaling ladders, placed side by side, to look out over the dreaded top.

  “No wind,” said Captain West. “Do you agree?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  They got down the ladders.

  “Ring up Brigade. Ask for the general. Tell him I have ordered you not to turn on the gas.”

  They returned past the silent faces, and entered the shelter. There in the same silence filled with a quaking sense of doom Phillip took the telephone and spoke to the general, saying, as he tried to keep his voice firm, “I am unable to carry on with the time-table, sir. I don’t trust the wind, sir.”

  A remote, impersonal voice replied, “I’ve already spoken to Division about the wind being unsuitable, and received a direct order to carry on. Therefore you will release your gas according to your orders. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Faces were looking at him. He was about to speak when the candle flames fluttered and went out, as in fright before a concentration of heavy buffets that shook pieces of chalk out of the walls and caused all the men within to flinch. When the blanket was drawn back Phillip saw the forms and faces of men holding rifles, the scaling ladders, the wrinkled parapet line of chalk-bags in the rain as a scene in one of the scratchy flickering early bioscope films at the Electric Palace.

  It was the intensive bombardment before the assault. It was 5.50 a.m. on the 25th of September 1915. The battle of Loos had begun.