Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  When they had unlimbered, and the mules were rugged up at the picket line, Phillip went to have a word with Cutts. He found him sitting by the fire, one arm round Little Willie, the German dog. Little Willie was paying the company a visit. According to Nolan, Little Willie had been on leave in the Hindenburg Line, as his coat smelled of stale sausage and cigar smoke.

  Phillip sat on an empty shell-box opposite Cutts. Since the shelling that afternoon, a tarpaulin shelter had been rigged up, to conceal the light from the east. He warmed his hands over the coloured flames of the coke fire, in which could be seen dull-red boulets. These egg-shaped objects of compressed clay and coal-dust had been scrounged from the remains of an old German dump beside the railway line at Achiet by Sergeant Rivett, who had brought back a couple of filled sandbags that morning.

  “I was blown up by a shell, Cutts. It was at Messines, in the first year of the war, when I was a tommy like you. I was buried, and when an old sweat who had befriended me dug me out, my eyes flickered with electric snakes for some time afterwards. When we came out of the battle I couldn’t sleep, for fear of going back again. So I understand anyone else who feels like that.”

  The driver said nothing. His teeth began to chatter. When he opened his mouth to speak he gulped. Phillip saw that his hands were tightly clenched.

  “It’s a bad old war, Cutts. The only thing to do is to try and stick it out. Nolan and I will help you. So when you feel awful, or terribly afraid, come and see me, will you? An officer is the soldier’s friend you know.”

  “T-t-thank you, sir!”

  “I am like you. I can’t get used to shells. It’s the noise which frightens me. It’s such an absolutely final, brutal noise, isn’t it? Well, goodnight, Cutts, and don’t worry. Don’t fight yourself in your brain. That’s the worst thing to do. I know, I used to do it. Still do, in fact. Prayer does help, you know. Good-night, old fellow.”

  Cutts gulped thanks.

  Some hours later Sergeant Rivett came to Phillip’s tent. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but it’s Cutts again. He’s wounded in the hand. I’ve put on a dressing. I think you should see him, sir.”

  Phillip pulled on his long rubber thigh boots, which he had “won” from an R.E. dump in Albert after his boot-caps had been burnt by the stove. Worn with thick woollen stockings, over socks, they had kept his feet dry and warm. It had made a great difference to his outlook, he found.

  “What happened?”

  “The fire bucket exploded, sir. I think someone must have put a Mills bomb in it.”

  “Who can have done that?”

  “Well, sir, I won’t go so far as to say that it comes within the category of a self-inflicted wound, but it cannot be ruled out——”

  “Just a moment, Sergeant Rivett! Didn’t you scrounge some coal from the Achiet dump? German coal? And you know the orders about looting, surely? Moreover, that was a booby-trap—their egg-bombs look just like the French boulets. I expect we’ll be able to find fragments lying about in the morning. If any are found, it will look like dereliction of duty—isn’t that what you said—on our part, won’t it? You for taking the coal, I for not running you in for looting. However, Cutts is the one who matters.”

  The wounded man was lying back, wrapped in a blanket. Nolan was with him. Phillip lifted up his arm, with the bandage on the hand.

  “I don’t trouble!” exclaimed Cutts, as though proud of his power to bear pain. “I can git up. Look!” as he struggled on his feet, revealing in the light of a torch the dripping of blood.

  “Take it easy, Cutts. How did it happen?”

  “Bookit blowed up sudden like, sir, after I’d put on coal to keep it goin’ for next picket, sir. It caught Little Willie, sir. I’m very sorry, sir.”

  “Is the dog hurt?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He cleared at the clap.”

  “He can’t be very hurt, if he could run. Well, I think it’s a straightforward case of egg bombs being mixed in with the coal we got, another booby trap. Gall it gunshot wound due to Enemy Action. Or do you think it’s a case for a Court of Enquiry, Sergeant Rivett?”

  “That’s for you to decide, sir.”

  “Now let Nolan take him down to the Aid Post. Best of luck, and let me know how you get on, won’t you, Cutts? Write me a letter. I’ll help you in any way I can—remember!” He shook the uninjured hand and, having said goodnight to Nolan and Sergeant Rivett, went back to his tent, which he had to himself, having got it the same time as the boots from Albert.

  But there was not much sleep: a battery of 60-pounders during the day had taken up position in a sunken road a hundred yards away, and was firing over the tents. Every white stab buffeted the canvas. He lit a candle, and read the Oxford Book.

  Every time a gun fired it snuffed out the flame, so he gave up reading; and lying back, was soon asleep.

  He awoke at first light, and lay motionless in his flea-bag, listening. The ground seemed to be bubbling. A prolonged bombardment was taking place somewhere. Was it falling on the front line, in the valley below the Hindenburg Line? Had the Germans retired only to lure on the Fifth Army, to cut it off by driving into the flanks of its untrenched positions? In contour’d chalky country sound acoustics behaved oddly; it was not possible always to determine how far away a bombardment was taking place.

  He got up, and roused the sergeant, ordering all animals to be saddled, and hooked into limbers, all stores and officers’ valises to be loaded, ready for emergency. When it was light he mounted Prince and rode east, crossing the Arras-Bapaume road, seeking the highest ground where he could use his field-glasses. From the crest of a field of young wheat he saw the Hindenburg Line across intervening folds in the ground as a bluish-grey riband of new barbed wire against grass. The trenches were on the reverse slope, out of view. All was quiet, no shell-spoutings of counter-barrage upon the horizon. While he sat upon his black horse, looking east, a drift of wind, or some eddy in the strata of heavy dark clouds, amplified a roll of gunfire from the north. He remembered the rumoured attack on the Vimy Ridge, near Arras. The spring push had begun!

  Heavy cold rain fell, with intervals of sleet, all the morning. The news in the afternoon, at the Brigade forage dump in Achiet-le-Grand—where already new railway lines were being laid by Canadian engineers—was that the First and Third Armies had gone over at dawn, and taken thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns. But the attack made by the Australians near Bullecourt had failed.

  “Who’s windy now?” said Sergeant Rivett, to the lance-corporal in charge of the grooms. “We had to load up all the stores, now we’ve got to put them all back again.”

  *

  The next morning a message came from Brigade to stand by to move forward in the event of the Germans evacuating the Hindenburg Line opposite Fifth Army. Allenby’s Third Army up north had got through the last line of the Hindenburg System, and now before them was only the Drocourt-Quéant Switch, still under construction. Rumours late at night, via the post-corporal from Sapignies, were of a cavalry massacre at Monchy-le-Preux, when a charge had come up against uncut barbed-wire and machine-gun fire. Hundreds of riderless horses were running about the countryside, said the corporal. Phillip thought about going there the next morning, to see if he could pick up one or two; but orders came to stand by to move forward at half an hour’s notice. Hobart told his officers, in confidence, that if the Hindenburg Line was not evacuated, the division was to take part in an attack at the hinge by Croiselle-les-Fontaines. The French, too, under a new General, Nivelle, who had replaced that old dud Joffre, were about to open a very big attack down in Champagne. So it looked as though, at last, the old Hun might crack! That night, under the tarpaulin roof of the mess, the levels of initialled whiskey bottles were lowered.

  The next morning there was another casualty among the drivers. All the military telegraph poles had been cut down by the Germans, the wires lay tangled and spread about. Driver Tallis, walking through them, tripped on a wire, there was a sharp bri
ttle explosion, and he dropped, writhing with pain in one leg, into the flesh and bone of which small white fragments of porcelain had cut deep. One piece went through his ankle, penetrating boot leather twice. He was congratulated on his luck. Just in time, he was told: for while he was being carried away a Special Duty Squad of the R.E.s came and dismantled all the telephone insulators, finding that several had been removed from the cross-pieces and detonators fixed into the hollows before being tied on again with wire. Phillip saw him before he went away to hospital. “Write to me, Tallis, and tell me how young Phil is getting on.”

  *

  The company moved a mile and a half away, to lower ground near the piles of bricks and rafters called Ervillers, a village through which passed the neatly swept road from Bapaume to Arras. They camped on a pasture field a couple of hundred yards from the village. Phillip thought how much cleaner and finer was the country than that of Belgium. It was so open and wide. Enemy aircraft were often flying over; one shot up the camp, approaching suddenly with a roar fifty feet above the grass. It was gone before the sentry could fire his rifle. So Phillip, finding a cart-wheel in the village, with the axle, had it fixed to a post put in the earth, so that the wheel revolved horizontally. Upon this a Vickers gun was mounted, to fire into the sky. Late one afternoon, when the sun was dipping to spill golden light upon an otherwise peaceful scene—the ground was being prepared for a gymkhana—an aircraft dived through the luminous haze from about twelve thousand feet, firing tracer and incendiary bullets. One of the observation balloons tethered in a line a couple of thousand feet up showed a lick of flame, while a tiny figure jumped from the basket below; and as the balloon broke raggedly, issuing black smoke and redder flames, the aeroplane zoomed up, fell over at the turn, and dived, firing upon a second. This, too, caught fire. Both were falling when the zoom and turn was once more repeated. A third caught fire. Down dived the Hun scout, to flatten at twenty feet and roar over the camp, while the Vickers gun shook the wheel as it fired but the aeroplane, its black crosses quite large, tore away east. By this time the balloons had shed their crews who floated down on parachutes, fortunately away from the burning ruins which dragged down at the end of their cables, in shreds and flaming tatters.

  The next day, while he was censoring mail, Phillip read an account of what had happened in a letter by Sergeant Rivett to Downham, still apparently at the Training Centre. He considered that, if it fell into enemy hands, Rivett’s letter would give away the whereabouts of the company. So he blacked out about the raid on the Fifth Army balloons, laughing while he did so as he imagined bloody old Downham trying to make out what it was all about.

  April 23rd, 1917. 286 Company M.G.C. B.E.F.

  Dear Sir,

  It is with the greatest pleasure that I take up my pen in reply to your most welcome letter. I sincerely hope, Sir, that a brief account of my doings since last I wrote will be interesting to you. Things are happening fast out here, as the following account may convey. This afternoon, while I was in the act of supervising the putting up of jumps for the forthcoming company sports, suddenly an —— ——— appeared and in a trice it –––– –––– –––– a ––––, then it –––– –––––– –––– –––– ––––. And as if that wasn’t enough for the blighter, he pooped –––– –––– in full view of the entire camp!

  The sports were held the next day. The main event, devised by Phillip, was a bit complicated. It was called the Inter-Section Relay Jerusalem Cuckoo Leapfrog race. Four riders, one representing each section, set off, to jump each fence: and having done this, each was to await the arrival, if any, of his No. 2 jockey, over the same fence. There they were to exchange mules, and the “Number Ones” to set off for the second fence, on the other side of which each would dismount again, await to exchange with his Number Two, and so on round the course. Mules would not as a rule jump; it was hard to make them go at more than an obliging trot, so, as Sergeant Rivett wrote again a few days later to Major Downham, ‘the fun was fast and furious’. So was the Sergeant’s style, thought Phillip.

  I wish, Sir, that I had the pen of an artist to describe to you the mulish amble to the first jump, the complete stoppage of all contestants there, while the entire cohort of racemules waited for their struggling riders to choose another way forward! Then, of course, the expert had to show us how to do it! Mounting the greyest of grey ‘donks’, as we call them out here, Sir, he clapped spurs in vain upon the extremities of hollow ribs. He had no more success than if he had mounted the lions in Trafalgar Square for a similar purpose! This old grey long-eared chum showed what he felt about the whole performance when he began to eat the catkins on the hazel sticks with which the jump was erected. Our C.O. was heard to remark sotto voce, as though to the aforesaid sticks, “Who says a mule hasn’t got a sense of humour?”

  SECRET 13.4.17

  EAST PENNINE DIVISION ORDER NO. 36

  –––––––––––– (words erased) –––––––––––– the attack on the HINDENBURG LINE ordered in E.P. Divisional Order No. 31 of 8.4.17, will take place at a date (not before April 16th) and at an hour to be notified later, unless the enemy withdraw previously on account of the attack of the Third Army.

  His eye skated down the blue roneographed foolscap page … responsible for the capture of BULLECOURT … will jump off at two minutes before Zero hour and will advance at rate of 100 yards in 2 minutes … strong bombing party will push Eastwards … before the barrage lifts … special attention being paid to the Sunken Roads running N.E. in U. 22, where strong parties of the enemy are liable to be met with … One battalion and two companies of the Brigade will push forward at Zero hour plus 2 hours and 15 minutes under an artillery barrage to the 3rd Objective … 1 Brigade will be in reserve in the valley North West of MORY … Order re Tanks will be issued later … Tanks will follow the Infantry as closely as possible, but the Infantry will not wait for the Tanks … The 2nd Australian Division will attack on the right—boundaries as shown on the attached sketch.

  *

  “That’s a bloody fine way, I don’t think, to send out Battle Orders, ‘Provided the wire is sufficiently cut’ scratched out in pencil so bloody carelessly that anyone can read the words! I bet that’s the work of some fat little rotter from Eton sitting on his bottom and living off the fat of the land. The staff all over!” said Pinnegar. “There’ve been half a dozen attacks on Fontaine-les-Croiselles already, and local assaults on Bullecourt, and every one a wash-out!”

  “How deep are those belts of wire, Teddy?”

  “Anything up to a hundred yards.”

  “What part do the sections play?”

  “Overhead covering fire from the railway embankment, then move forward with the third wave. Stay in the first objective, under Brigade order, If we get there.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “Remain with Jack at company headquarters, under the railway embankment.”

  “Where’s Brigade battle headquarters?”

  “At l’Homme Mort. What’s the idea of all the questions?”

  “I just want to know.”

  “I said, What’s the idea?”

  “Oh, just in case you’re all knocked out.”

  “You’re a bloody fine Job’s comforter! Anyway, you’re only the transport wallah. You do damn-all in the attack. A.T.O. doesn’t count in seniority for command, you know.”

  “Of course I know. But it’s just as well to know, Teddy.”

  *

  A yellowhammer was building a nest in the bank near the cookhouse. He went to see how it was getting on. But with no real interest, because, while quite content with life, he was not in English country.

  The new leaves on the hedgerow bushes, the pricking green of barley and oats in the fields, swallows flittering about broken barn walls, twittering happily—everything was seen a little apart, as though through thin glass. The war did not worry him, the coming attack gave a feeling of excitement, as
something to be felt apart from himself. It was a comfortable feeling that he was out of the actual fighting, an interested spectator. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the fine spring weather.

  By May Day there were three eggs in the rootlet cup lined with hair from mules’ tails. Jules the chef came out of his cooking shelter and smiled at Phillip. He, too, was watching the nest. “We call the yellowhammer a scribbling lark in Gaultshire, Jules. See, the eggs are all scribbled on, as by a wet copying ink pencil.”

  “Very pretty, sir. Dinky little bird. I love it!”

  Phillip saw a new Jules. He was kind. “Many fellows come to see it, sir. They wouldn’t think of hurting it. Nice boys!”

  Back at company headquarters, Pinnegar was huffing at a paper just come in. “Same old tripe,” he said.

  “May I see?”

  “I don’t care what you do.”

  (SECOND) EAST PENNINE DIVISION

  ORDER OF THE DAY

  As the Division will shortly be going into action to take part in its first great battle, the Divisional Commander desires to assure all ranks of his complete confidence in their ability to defeat the German troops opposed to them.

  That the East Pennine Division will maintain its reputation for staunchness and grit—qualities for which Yorkshiremen have ever been famed—that they will gain all objectives and hold them against the most determined counter-attacks, is the firm conviction of the General Officer who is proud to be their Commander.

  May 1st 1917.

  At 3.10 hours two days later the servant pulled at Phillip’s leg under the camel-hair bag and said, “Get up, sir,” quietly. He was awake at once, and after a cup of gun-fire tea, thick and sugary, went to the wheatfield on the 110-metre line enclosed within a single strand of wire against trespass. Zero hour was at 3.45 a.m. About 3.44 a.m., in the hush of darkness beginning to give way to a spectral pallor in which he could see the wire of the reserve line across the sunken road as a blackish mass, a lark rose in song above him. It was followed by another, and a third; and he waited, with the stillness of expectation, while the singing grew faint and shrill as the birds flew towards the paling stars. There was a great ragged orange flash, oval and instant, from the four 9.2 howitzers in the chalk quarry on his right, and while the flash went through his eyes into his mind the sky became one great raging sea of light. Hundreds of batteries were firing. The 18-pounders were far in front, in the shallow open valley through which he had passed many times while taking limbers, in the dusk, to the railway embankment; 60-pounder counter-battery guns stabbed whitely beyond the sunken road, merging into the orange belches of howitzers—6-inch, 9.2, and 12-inch behind him, under the crest. Thousands of great fingers of light were flickering to the zenith, while the earth shook and rumbled with one continuous drumming reverberation. And through the intense exhilaration of this massive light and sound, while red, green and golden rockets arose from the ragged line of fire where shells were bursting, he heard, faint and high and thin, seeming to him to be like the jingling of frailest silver chains, the songs of larks.