A rustle of papers amongst the officers as if a breeze passed over some tall grasses, or scabious flowers by a fresh country road, or a long meadow in far-off England…
“Isn’t it Bion7”
Oh God, what’s he saying? “Oh yes sir.”
“I don’t believe you are listening!” Still, he had a kindly expression.
“About Mons sir. We end up where we started.”
“No, where the Expeditionary Force started.”
“Yes sir. That’s what I mean sir.”
I entered our first village very cautiously. At the top of some cellar stairs stood a young slut of fourteen; she watched me, feral, eyes intense but empty of speculation. She watched me; watched. I felt I ought to say something—”It’s a fine day”—or ask where everyone was. She felt, knew, I had spoken, was speaking, would speak. That instant, soundless, almost without action, she was gone, melted into the cellar below.
‘Scuse me, said the Elephant’s child most politely, can you tell me the way to have a baby?
Ask the cat.
‘Scuse me asking, why the hell do you haunt my dreams you pasty faced little… little… school girl? Whore?
So? I was shocked. After four years of war, and two years of combatant service, mostly fighting, I could say, “Wot the bloody ‘ell!”, or perhaps it was only “What the bloody hell”. But sex, pregnancy even, that took some getting over. It was true after all then; the Germans were wicked. I wondered if she had been raped. It came to my mind in a flash; I could see it all clearly like a neat Matania drawing—like ‘The Royal What-nots kneeling in prayer at Holy Communion before Battle’. What shell-fire! You could almost smell the bursting of the shells! What did it feel like when your tank went over the body? Sorry ma’am, I forgot to notice, but it didn’t dream well o’nights.
This little pregnant creature didn’t look at all bad—really. She had gone past the civilized state, like the mobs chasing and taunting a mother with shaven head as she strode out angry and proud and defiant carrying her baby into shelter of a house in Rouen. There is a certain dignity about the wild animal to which this little child had come. Perhaps I should have taken off my tin hat and suddenly said “Shoo!”. That would have sent her scuttling downstairs quick I bet! It would have been good for a laugh in the mess.
I was tired and it did not seem funny. I was relieved when other officers had as little sense of humour as I had. Yet should an officer, brought up in all the privilege and luxury of the governing class of what was then the most powerful nation in the world, be an immature innocent with a capacity for remaining so through four years of war? ‘Stormed at by shot and shell, bravely they rode and well’. Still not an idea in hell, ‘noble six hundred’.
In Marcoing the band played the Marseillaise to a silent, unresponsive crowd. It came to an end and they stopped. The band master, with a flash of genius, had an idea. “Play it again”, he said. This time the crowd went mad. The street was suddenly filled with flags—Union Jacks, Tricolours, a few Stars and Stripes. Where had they come from? Where had they been hidden all these years?
The excitement died down as suddenly as it had arisen, like a sharp wind, a few heavy drops of rain and then a silence disturbed by the sound of distant storm.
43
ALTHOUGH I perfectly well knew the contents, I read the signal carefully when it reached me. It said that all troops would stand fast at the position they had reached at 11.00 hours on the 11th day of the 11th month. They were to cease fire but all the usual military precautions would be maintained. This I supposed was a way of saying the war was over.
For some weeks the command of the army had shown anxiety about what was called ‘peace talk’. News of the German request for an armistice was known to everyone. We could certainly understand that if our army stopped fighting it might well be impossible to start it again. Although there was no danger, as far as I was in a position to observe, that the army would stop fighting, it was behaving like an ill-trained runner who keeps looking over his shoulder instead of pressing on till he has passed the winning tape. This was the more odd because there was no winning tape.
One of my men was walking beside his tank as it was travelling back to the camp; it was an undistinguished routine trek. The tank rode over an unexploded grenade which, being under the armoured track, burst harmlessly. But Mallard, the gunner in question, fell dead. It seemed so improbable that it took time to realize that one of the grenade fragments—it must have been the only one to escape from under the track—had penetrated his heart killing him instantly and leaving only a small puncture wound to show the point of entry.
‘Dear Madam, I regret to inform you that your son…’ was killed by accident when the war was over? Why make a fuss about it? What about his wife and children? Thank God he was too young and can’t have had any. Oh yes he had though; and she was expecting a baby. ‘Dear Madam, I regret to inform you that your husband…’. More fuss; about nothing.
Rations were bad; potatoes disappeared and the men grumbled. The company was paraded and I explained; the shortage would not last long as it was only due to the army having to give up part of its rations to feed the civilian population. The company heard me in silence. They did not believe it; they did not disbelieve it.
Six months earlier there had been a popular song with a refrain—’The war was over last July, It says so in ‘John Bull”.
“You can’t believe a word they say”, a private said to me on reading some current example of official euphoria.
‘We are holding the enemy in our battle positions at Tincourt’. I had read the lie out to my mother. Wonderful stuff, good old tape for holding enemies in their battle positions.
“Do you know”, said an open-eyed incredulous young officer, “that where I was a chap rode out on a horse, right in front of our position, outed with his trumpet and sounded the Cease Fire. Then he rode back I Can you beat it?”
“Weill What did you expect him to do?” asked Carter drily.
“Where I was”, said another, “the Boches spent the last five minutes blowing off every round they had. Of course our chaps let fly a proper barrage. It might have been the Somme again—wonder how many people lost their lives in that last little joke.”
There were rumours: the Guards had refused to go on parade; the Guards had mutinied at their depot.
“Sir!” saluted Sergeant-Major Cannon, “Company refuses to come on parade.”
“Tell them not to be so bloody silly.” Off he went.
Here was a fine state of affairs. I had not the remotest idea what to do. All this stuff about the Guards—devilish awkward if it turned out to be true. Now my own company! I felt I would break out in a sweat at any moment. Suppose they still refused. They were nearly all new men, recently trained miners; they hated the army. They did not know us, their officers. If I had not been scared I would have laughed at an implication that had they known us—what fine chaps we were, comrades in arms and all that—they would never have mutinied. // they knew us it would be a ruddy miracle if they obeyed at all.
“Sir!” I wish to hell he wouldn’t make me jump by being so hellish military. It was as bad as the clicking door in the Trappist monastery at Mont des Cats. Each time it clicked it made us all, every officer in the place, duck the bullet, curse and swear and do it again at once as the door clicked open again.
“Sir!” I knew it was Cannon. I was only pretending, to gain time, like “Is Captain Bion there? You’re wanted up the line sir.”
“Yes, Sergeant-Major?”
“They won’t come out sir.” I knew it. What do I do now? No idea. It was with surprise and relief that I heard myself say, “Tell the Lewis gun crews to fall in with their guns at once. Post them to cover the huts.”
“Sir!” Blast him I Those clickings were getting on my nerves. He was back again in less than five minutes. “They are in position sir. Six guns facing the huts.”
“With the hill behind the huts?”
�
�Yes sir.”
“Go and tell the men again—’Don’t be a lot of bloody fools’.” He hesitated. I knew he was going to ask me what he was to do then. I still had no idea. “If they go on being idiotic, call me.”
“Sir!” Those damned clicking heels of his. Anyway it might be his last chance of being military. I wished to God I didn’t feel so scared! ‘The war was over last July. It said so in GHQ orders’. Had anyone told the Boches?
Sergeant Cannon again. “They’ve come out sir. They are on parade.” I could have wept with relief. “I’ll be out in a minute Sergeant-Major. They can stand easy till I come.” What was I talking about? Of course they could—there was nothing else for them to do.
Alone in the hut I wiped the sweat off my face and tried to stop my trembling. At last I couldn’t stand it any more and walked onto the parade ground.
The guns were in position, glistening. The crews were looking at me intently; I could feel the penetrating curiosity. The company were fuming, angry. Wherever I let my eyes rest I fancied that the answering glance was angry, resentful, humiliated.
At last Sergeant-Major Cannon reported, “All present and correct sir.” I told him to stand at ease.
“Sergeant-Major Cannon tells me you fellows didn’t want to come on parade. You forget the war’s not over—this is only an armistice. We’d have looked a bloody lot of fools if the Boches has come over there”—I pointed my stick at the hills behind—”and caught us while you were all stuck in there.”
While the officers were preparing to move their men off to the various section exercises I watched and carefully paid attention to the Lewis guns ready for action behind. Then, before they moved off I went over to the guns and carried out a minute inspection as if it were an ordinary everyday routine. I chose not to remark that they were loaded with ball ammunition.
At last they had all moved off leaving Sergeant-Major Cannon and myself alone. “Tomorrow I want all the men to parade in sections. Give them some instruction on military law, King’s Regulations and a snappy bit about the Mutiny Act.” He seemed to want to say something, but changed his mind, saluted and went off.
There was some kind of football league competition in which all companies in the brigade took part. In our company excitement reached fever heat because the miner reinforcements we had received included some first-rate footballers who were extremely serious about the game however much they hated the army and the war. Keeping, without in any way being aware of it, to my groove, I showed the conventional enthusiasm for the company to which I was now second in command. I watched the football; I knew the names of the stars of the team; I knew enough football to appreciate the matches which were often skilful displays, so this aspect of my duties was not at all unpleasant. But I was puzzled and slow to understand that whether I was interested or not was a matter of complete indifference to the men. The majority of the company were reinforcements but even those who were not shared the new spirit, a spirit which could be expressed by a civil but slightly incredulous, ‘Who the hell are you to be asking about our boys, their matches and successes?’ I was now twenty-one and had not experienced what it was to be an antiquity, a survival from a remote past.
Carter, Hauser and I were the only officers who had served with the battalion from the start in England. The Quartermaster, who of course did not go into action, was the only warrant officer; of the men there was none. Even of those who had seen more than six months fighting there was a mere handful. Though we did not realize it, we were men who had grown from insignificance to irrelevance in the passage of a few short years.
Christmas released a delayed, hectic, hysterical excitement of celebration. ‘Everyone suddenly burst out singing’, wrote Siegfried Sassoon. Our singing had alcoholic overtones; there were too many missing faces. The jubilation of the winning footballers was not greatly different from the jubilation of those who had survived fighting. Keep the men occupied; sport, trophies, homes ‘fit for heroes to live in’, anything to hold at bay the dark and sombre world of thought.
A mixed crowd of some two thousand troops toiled—it could hardly be called ‘marched’—up the hill to Shoreham camp. I had been demobilized immediately after Christmas. An old woman stood at the door of a respectable but dreary house, waving a Union Jack. Anxiety about the reception she would be likely to receive from a lot of ‘rough Tommies’ made her voice tense. “Welcome home boys, welcome home”, she squeaked. For a moment there was astonishment at the apparition. The impulse to jeer was suppressed. “Give the old fool a cheer”, said someone and to this invitation the succeeding files somewhat embarrassedly responded. “They might have given us a band up this bloody hill.”
At the station the train to take us to London had no lights. In the growing darkness a man clambered onto the roof of the train to protest.
“It was the same after the Boer War. It’s the same now. Ruddy heroes when you’re wanted; so much muck when it’s finished. It’ll be the same next time as this.”
And as things have been they remain. Insignificance to Irrelevance in a few years. No one could explain that if the British Empire did not share the same fate it was because of a few poets. But what can poets do against nuclear fission or, even more potent, some germ being carefully tended and nurtured by biologists of marvellous skill and foresight—as is the way with that clever tool-making animal, man?
The Long Week-End 1897-1919 Page 32
