John Masefield’s Great War: Collected Works

by Philip Errington

  As he went out the two clerks stopped writing and looked up at me. They were two nice old soldiers, but the look had about it something of the police court and the firing party. It made me wonder what they would do if I stepped toward the door. I stood still where I was, and gazed at the pictures and maps, and they dropped their eyes and went on with their writing.

  The officer was gone for ten minutes. As I had imagined, he had gone to telephone to my section about me. When he came back he was very nice to me; he even tried his English on me. “We wish you good luck!” he said. Then in French he said that some camions were about to start for my village and that I could go in one of them. He gave back my papers, smiled, shook hands, again wished me good luck and sent one of the old clerks with me to the place of the town, where the camion convoy stood.

  When I went out of the hot office the cold seemed to go right through me. Snow was blowing about in those little dry aimless pellets, too tiny to be called flakes, which come at the beginning of a fall. We went out of the station and round a block of buildings into the place, which had a light or two in it. Just as we came round the corner I heard quite plainly a noise of distant explosions – not, perhaps, many together, but coming in a run, one after the other, pretty continually. “Les canons,” said my guide. They seemed to come from somewhere above, to the east of me.

  On the south side of the place was a big building with a kind of veranda in front of it. Men were moving about with lanterns near this veranda, and presently I saw that it was not a veranda but a convoy of big, roofed, motor wagons getting ready to start. My guide explained to someone who I was and where I was to go; he then bade me goodnight and turned away. He was a little elderly man from a village in Haute-Savoie; I met him afterward. The convoy man put me into one of his wagons, which was full of sacks of potatoes; I curled myself up out of the drafts, with my baggage round me; presently we started and I fell asleep.

  When I got down from the wagon we were in a pitch-dark village street, where a mountain torrent ran in front of the houses. The roar of the water almost drowned the noise of the guns, which were still going on somewhere above me. The snow was blowing about, there was a smell of sauerkraut and a dog was howling. My driver helped me to take my baggage to a door from which a light streamed. The wagons went on after that; and as they started the commandant of my section welcomed me in.

  I went into a long, narrow room where about thirty weary men were eating supper. A place was made for me near the stove, so that I thawed and ate at the same time. The food was exceedingly good, it being near the Front, and there is a saying: “The nearer the Front the sweeter the meat.” But the men there had the air of eating so as to be done with it. They were tipping food into themselves exactly as one tips letters into a letter-box. One or two men, as they finished, got up and went out. A minute or two later I heard their ambulances starting in the street outside.

  There was not much need to ask questions, for what I had seen and heard among the soldiers during the day had taught me that there was fighting in the mountains. Now I could see that the fighting was hard and that these men were in it. The fighting had lasted for two days and nights, so they told me, and this was the third night, and the ambulances had been going and coming all the time till the drivers were nearly worn out. Both sides were attacking. Far up, above us on the ridges, there was a battle of hell for the possession of the peaks, and no man could say which way the fight would turn.

  A Journey in Darkness

  From the manner of the men I gathered that there was a chance that our side might not win. I will not say that I was scared; but there I was, just arrived, and the battle was going on, and it was dark, and I knew nothing about a battle anyway. One man fell fast asleep at his food, even as he ate. I had read of exhausted soldiers doing this; now I saw it done.

  The commandant asked if I were too weary to go right away in one of the ambulances, so as to give the driver a night’s rest. He said that he would drive, so as to show me the road, and that I should be the assistant. I said that of course I would come. He said: “We’ll start directly after supper. We’ll go to the topmost poste, right up among the hills. I hope the snow will keep off.”

  I asked if it were far to where the fighting was. He said: “About four miles, all uphill, and in forest as dark as pitch. Wrap yourself, for it’s going to be cold, though the engine will warm you up when she gets going.”

  I talked jauntily enough, but I did not feel jaunty. I had come all that way, four thousand miles, without really thinking what it would be like at the end. The excitement of helping France, and the pleasure of being in uniform, and the vanity of being thought a hero, had kept me from seeing the truth. Now here it was, in the dark and cold, only four miles away, and it made me anxious in a new kind of way. We went out of the mess room to the street where the ambulance cars were parked.

  As soon as my eyes were accustomed to the darkness I made out some blackness of buildings, with chinks of light at windows and doors. Beyond these in one place I made out a bigger blackness, which was a mountain. Snow was still drifting about in pellets. Not enough was on the ground to cover it; there was just a dust of snow, powdering about in a stillness that foretold a big fall. If the snow had been on the ground it would have made the night lighter. As it was, it was one of the darkest nights I could remember, and as cold as the Banks.

  The commandant climbed into his seat; I sat beside him, and we started.

  For the first few minutes it was not so bad, because the road lay along the valley of the brook for a fairly open stretch. Then we ran into a village where the darkness was utter. I could scarcely catch the blackness of the houses against the blackness of the sky. There was not even a gleam of light in this village. “It has been shot up,” said the commandant. “Nobody lives at this end. They shoot it up still from time to time, just at this end, trying to catch the crossroads.”

  We took a turning at the crossroads and came into what seemed a wider place. I could see nothing, but the commandant slowed down here, and when the engine quieted I could hear other engines moving beside us and see a sort of moving blackness in the blackness, where something was wallowing along. I heard a horse walking past us, then rather a lot of horses, and I caught a whiff of stables and horse sweat and heard a clack of chain. Straining to see, the dust of snow blew into my eyes; and the pellets pitted gently on my face and against the screen.

  We went on a little, and the noise of the torrent fell away, and I heard a noise of men marching, and cries in the road and the rumble of wagons. How the commandant could see to drive I could not imagine. I do not know even now how one drives on those roads in the dark nights. We were in a road with convoys of wagons and moving troops going in both directions, and I could see nothing but blackness that might have been anything, full of noises from everywhere.

  Presently in front of us a shaft of light fell across the road from a door suddenly opened and left wide. I saw men on a sidewalk at my left, and, on my right, going across the shaft of light, in the same direction as ourselves, a column of soldiers marching. Someone on a white horse crossed the shaft, and glittered as he crossed; then rank after rank of men, all grey in the light and all alike, with their rifles and their packs and their tin dishes on their packs, and their buttoned-back coat skirts and shifting gaiters, went on and on.

  At first they were invisible, then they loomed up black and rather big, then became grey in the light, then darkened and passed into the darkness, and others and others came. We went slowly there, for men were going into the doorway from the road. One of them shouted “Bon repos!” to us, and another, seeing the car with the Red Cross upon it, knew that we were Americans and called out, in good Virginian: “Well! What’s the matter?” After that the blackness shut down upon us and I knew neither where we were nor how long we were going.

  Up the Mountain Slopes

  We turned to the left and went up a slope where there was a glow of light from a double doorway. It was the door of
a big house in use as a hospital. An ambulance was near the door and some brancardiers were unloading the wounded from it and carrying them up the steps. When we were clear of that house we saw no more light for a long time. We began to zigzag up the road that leads to the peaks. My companion told me that there were vineyards on both sides of us and that the enemy used to shell the vineyards when the grapes were ripe. I was glad that it was now long after grape harvest. Afterward I made that journey many times by daylight, and got to know it pretty well. It is a bad road even in daylight; its surface curves and gradients are all bad. At the beginning of the war it was a charcoal-burner’s cart track. They had made it a passable road for wartime. Perhaps the very best road comes down to that in wartime, from the traffic on it.

  We swung round a kind of bastion or bulge in the mountain, and one of the gusts that blow down glens pelted the dust of snow on our front and flank, with malice, as we came round. My eyes were stung with it so that I had to shut them, and as I shut them I heard the roar of water from a torrent that went under the road. I could not make anything out of the road, except that we were on the flank of a glen, and I learned that from the way the wind was blowing. I could see nothing but blackness and what I imagined to be in the blackness.

  It may partly have been the rhythm of the engines, partly the strain of not being able to see through the blackness and the snow dust, but all the time I felt that the road beside us was full of voices. I seemed to hear men talking as they marched, or singing those marching songs like

  C’est pour la Patrie

  Et pour la Nation,

  or sometimes bursting into laughter. Then I would crane out from behind the screen, expecting to find a column on the road, at my elbow, but there was no one there. Looking out like that, I saw a light very far below me; and realized that the light was in the valley and that we had already climbed, and were up among the hills.

  The car stopped for a moment; we had to get out to lift the bonnet. The noise of the men marching, with their laughter and songs, stopped with us, and instantly the peace of the night was in its place, with the ripple of a brook, trotting downhill, and a murmur like the noise of a beach where the sea falls upon sand. For an instant I felt that we were beside the sea or that we were on an island in the sea, for the noise of waves fell all round us and died and rose and strengthened, and then gathered as though the tide were upon us.

  “Is not that like the sea?”

  “It’s the pine beginning. It is all pine forest on from here.”

  “Listen!”

  There was no noise of cannon. One of the great owls of the forest was crying near by, and his mate was hunting in the valley. Somewhere, very far away, a motor horn sounded, and near at hand the pellets of snow pitted on our coats, and the breathing in the trees was made louder by them. The commandant flashed his torch, so as to show the road, just dusted with snow, running behind us between bare banks, and running on before us into what looked like an army of giants drawn up and halted on the path; these were the pines.

  When we were in the forest the noise of the voices began and I felt again all the impotence of blindness. The dust of the snow drove into my eyes, and I could see nothing but blackness, peopled – as it seemed – by voices and by bulks of blackness that would seem to be wagons or guns or marching columns and then prove to be nothing. We wound up the hill in a zigzag, like a beast nosing on a trail.

  After rounding each turn the commandant let her out and she ran uphill for a minute or two, hugging the inner bank. Then, as he judged her to be near the next turn, he edged her over, slowed her and crept along till we were round. I did not then know what lay beyond on the outside edge of the road. Afterward I saw it by daylight. The hill tips down on a slope that is the steepest a man can climb without having to use his hands. Out of this slope the pine trees shoot like the columns of a cathedral. There is nothing but the pine trees to keep a falling car from rolling over and over into the scree, and from the scree into the river at the bottom.

  We had groped our way round one or two turns when the car lurched, nosed into the bank, scraped along it, dropped her hind wheel with another lurch and then went on. The jolt gave me a pang, for I thought we were over. We slackened a bit and felt our way; and then from right ahead came the cry “Attention!” which in French means “Look out!” or “Mind what you’re playing at!”

  We stopped dead, and there came a shogging of feet; it was a column of the relève going up; we had overtaken the rear company, and now they were shifting to the right to let us go past. By a flash torch I could see the great packs upon the men’s shoulders and the droop of weary bodies. The men were not what you would call marching. They were plodding forward, much as pack slaves must have plodded on the road between Panama and Porto Bello.

  Batteries Open Fire

  We went warily on, sounding the horn; we heard the crunching of the road under the feet, and the strain of leather and the voices, though not the words, of those who cried for a lift. Presently we passed the rear company, and the voices died away, and we came to some gap or glen that let in the roar of the battle, and I heard the crashing of the guns and saw a glimmer in the sky. It did not last for more than a minute, but it went right through me, it was so much nearer. Then we passed again into the heart of the forest and that noise of the sea shut the battle away, except for an occasional crash from the French heavy guns on our side of the hill.

  All the time the snow was falling. It came from nowhere, over the screen into my eyes, almost as though someone were throwing it. Whenever I shut my eyes I heard voices and the noise of wagons ahead; whenever I opened them I saw blackness, with a sort of dance of greyness in it. Then the specks of the snow came into my eyes and made me shut them again. I cannot tell you the trouble of not being able to see. We crept forward, rubbing our nose in the bank and edging one wheel in the ditch, while the snow came pit-pit-pitter-pit and the crunch of the wagons filled the road. And the surf overhead was full of laughter.

  Then there were lights in among the tree boles – or, rather, streaks of light – with men’s bodies moving across the streaks and hurrying across the road. We had to wait while some hundreds of men came down at the pas de charge – a sort of heavy-laden trot – and went away to our left. They were out of breath, and their officers, being younger, called to them, and one or two of the men joked. The noise of the guns could be heard again, but somehow they seemed far off; the near-at-hand things were what mattered – these men in the road, the snow-like dust, and not being able to see.

  When we had gone some distance farther I had the shock of my life. Two hidden batteries in the wood beside us suddenly opened a rapid fire, with a succession of crashes and screams that sent my heart into my boots. Then over the noise of our engines came a wailing whistle; I saw a blinding light with a tree bole in it; there was a bang and a sound of something falling. Then another blinding light burst with a bang on the road in front of us; then another and another and another, each one glimmering nearer to us and screaming.

  The Shells in the Forest

  I did not need to be told that these were enemy shells and that they were meant to kill me. I made that out for myself. Was I scared? No; I was not scared. I was terrified out of my wits! Laying down my life for France seemed sweet and fitting four thousand miles away; but here it was being blown to bits by something unseen that rushed on you out of the dark. There came one awful thing; I felt the wind of it, it screamed right at us and flung earth over us.

  “That was a dud,” said the commandant. “It would have about put us west if it had burst. They have this bit of road down fine.”

  I got a bit of a hold of myself, though I felt my heart shaking like a buzzer. My tongue seemed too big for my mouth and all dried up at the roots, and my chest seemed so tight that I could hardly breathe. Ow-ow! Ow-ow!! Bong!!! came a shell in front. I swore with terror; and I remember the thought: “These damned artists don’t give you any idea of it!” Then I heard a bong behind us, and hea
rd a pellet hit the ambulance. Then came another dud fairly close, and then a succession of howling in the air that made me really sick.

  “They’re only our départs,” said the commandant. “But, golly, here’s an arrivée! Golly, he’s a big one!”

  Right ahead there was a roaring scream, louder than anything that had come. There was a blast on the road in front and a droning aloft from the shell shards spinning in the air; then a noise of collapsing and the gallop of a runaway horse. I heard the hoofs and the noise of chain and something slatting and dragging on the road, and then a half-mad ravitaillement horse came tearing downhill with a bit of his wagon still hitched to him. His chain hit our bonnet a good clip, and then he was gone. I got one thing from that horse – that this life of ours, man’s and horse’s, is pretty much of a piece in the main. I knew what he was feeling, and I felt the same way myself.

  By the time the last of the shell was down we were at the shell-hole in the middle of the road. I suppose it was four feet deep and six feet across. My first thought, as I flashed the torch so that we could dodge it, was: “Suppose another comes while we are here!” Then as our engine slackened I heard a man groaning and saw a piece of a horse and a sort of tumble of planks lying in the road. The groans came from among the planks, so we stopped and got down, and I just saw the face of an old man change into a dead face.

  “It got him on the head,” said the commandant, “and blew the one horse to pieces and cut the other loose. Here come some génies; they’ll clear the road.”

  The snow was drifting about still, but what there was of it was blowing up off the ground, not falling. The ground was powdered over with it. My flash torch made a circle of light round the dead man in the wreck; beyond the circle were a dimness, the road, tree boles, and then blackness. Out of the blackness came some men with a lantern. They were bearded men and moved slowly. They were the génies, or engineers, in charge of that section of the road.