Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  The company halted under the leaning Virgin at Albert. At 5 p.m. they entrained for Amiens; thence to Abbeville, for the Flanders front.

  Chapter 8

  MESSINES RIDGE

  They detrained at a new military station called Duke of York outside Bailleul. Phillip had seen this countryside in 1914, when it was all wide fields of grass or under the plough, with plashes of water along brown furrows reflecting a wintry sky. Now, nearly three years later, as far as one could see were rows of elephant-iron hutments, marquees flying the Red Cross flag, new roads leading through acres of massive dumps—shells, balls of barbed wire, wooden duckboards, guns, waggons, and ammunition boxes piled seven feet high.

  The dust in the air seemed to be part of the reverberation of the guns. Upon the roads was constant mechanised movement—hundreds of lorries, motorcars and motorcycles passing in two streams. There were guns, too, trundling along. Among them was a 15-inch howitzer, hauled by a tracked vehicle, with steaming radiator. Its slow forward movement was surrounded by many attendant Heavy Group gunners.

  30 Wed The great Whore of Death on the way to challenge her rival, Krupp’s Iron Virgin. Hung with black veils, she is lugged to the bridal chamber, served by her pollinating dupes. This monster from the dark side of the moon.

  New heavy railway lines had been laid close to the front, in concealed territory. From the railheads ran out light railway tracks, with small steam-engines pulling trucks loaded with shells, mortars, wire, screw-picket stakes, all the materials of attack. Where the light railways ended, narrower-gauge tram-lines began, the shallow trucks hauled by petrol-driven engines. Fatigues, latterly called working parties, once “supplied” to the sappers by infantry in reserve, were now provided by the new Labour Corps units, so that the fighting soldier’s renascent spirit was not dragged out of him in all weathers when “resting” in the back-areas.

  They were now in the Second Army, a Master-gunner’s Army—“Old Plum and Apple”—a play on the invariable jam issue, the General’s name, short figure, and chubby cheeks. It was known that an attack had long been prepared against the Messines—St. Eloi—Hill 60 ridge, from which the Germans looked down upon the British trenches, guns, and transport routes. For nearly a thousand days, from many points, German observers at the telephone had gazed through telescopes resting on ground-level splayed slits in the western walls of massive concrete-and-steel forts, called Mebus, built within the ruins of farm-cellars and other shattered buildings, behind belts of barbed wire, some of them a hundred yards thick. It was a war of attrition, in which all the skill, bravery, patriotism, and belief in Tightness of cause was identical in the deadlocked armies.

  The name, White Rose Camp, seemed to be ironical, with the dominating smells of horse-dung, chloride of lime and fat of smoking incinerators; but one morning, passing the Commandant’s office, he saw a white-washed brick wall, and a garden of various flowers growing below bushes of large white tea roses. All was beautifully kept by a German prisoner with the usual blue circles let into his tunic and trousers.

  *

  Nightingales were still singing; gun-flashes in the warm brief nights seemed to stimulate them. The company sections had special training as barrage gunners. They were under the command of Group at Division. Thirty, forty, fifty divisional guns would be firing together during the bombardment.

  There was a wood near the camp, and wandering in it he saw that acres of ground between the trees were covered by layers of sandbags filled with blue-grey clay. The blue gault clay of Gaultshire! What was its purpose? Why was a dump of it made there? And why had the sandbags been allowed to rot? Did they cover an underground magazine? The dumps at Achicourt near Arras had gone up before the battle for Vimy, set on fire by a German airman: perhaps now they were underground, for safety. But why no sentry? Or engine house to pump out water in this low-lying country?

  Captain Hobart supplied the answer when he dined with Phillip at the Faucon d’Or in Bailleul that night, in the room where the mirrors along the walls still remained smashed from September 1914, when drunken Uhlan officers, enjoying an after-dinner spree, had thrown empty bottles about.

  “Well, strictly entre nous, Sticks, we’ve got some very deep mines under the Messines-Wytschaete ridge, been diggin’ ’em since 1915, tunnels a hundred feet down, below the wet sand and slurry and into the blue gault clay. That’s what you saw in the wood. The stuff is dumped there and elsewhere under cover to prevent it being spotted by the Boche airmen. There’s been a hell of an underground war goin’ on among the tunnellers, ours and theirs, for years. Listenin’ apparatus, blowin’ in one another’s tunnels with camouflets, and other jolly little habits. However, we’ve been one up on the old Hun, I hear, with our silent pumps for air and water. Also, we’ve got deep dug-outs big enough to hold two battalions at once, and space to sleep a thousand men at a time. We’ve learned the lesson of the Somme, Sticks. Let’s have a brandy, shall we? Though I suppose those damned Uhlans drank all the real old stuff, what?”

  All Weather Jack usually spoke in that jaunty, polished sort of way, so unlike pukka regular soldiers. Phillip wondered if he had assumed this manner, a sort of shining boot-polish manner, because he felt he wasn’t really “out of the top drawer”.

  The next morning Captain Hobart held a conference of his officers.

  “As you know, we are soon taking part in the opening phase of a battle which will lead, it is hoped, to the end of the war this year. The part the M.G.C. will play is twofold. One, before the infantry go over and during the actual assault, when batteries of massed Vickers will pour curtain fire 400 yards ahead of the creeping 18-pounder shrapnel barrage, which will move ahead of our infantry. Vickers guns will be emplaced well behind our front line, to sweep the crest and beyond. A stop to each gun will be fitted, to prevent the barrel being depressed to below the safety arc of fire over the heads of the infantry. This lattice fire, as it might be called, is to prevent enemy reinforcements coming up, and to catch those retreating.

  “The second part we play is when we move forward and meet the counter-attack while it is forming up, breaking it, before it can become effective, by firing on all tracks, routes, and roads on the other side of the hill.

  “Now for the enemy tactics. The old Hun has a new plan of elastic defence against our assaults. It consists, broadly speaking, of lines of concrete forts, fairly massive, about 200 yards apart in their second line. They are low, 4 or 5 feet above ground at the most, and strong enough to resist a direct hit of anything under an 8-inch how. The concrete is made of the finest water-worn gravel of the Rhine, brought in barges through Holland, and reinforced with steel rods, about an inch thick, to absorb the shock of shells on impact.

  “The garrisons of these forts wear white arm-bands, and don’t retreat. On the other hand, the Germans in the trenches of the foremost positions aren’t supposed to stay and fight there, but to do what damage they can, and then clear off away back behind the Allgemeine überstellenbau, the line of forts, and fight from crater to crater, returning with reinforcements according to how our advance goes. It’s an elastic defence, you see.

  “Now for other main aspects. This time there’s going to be no mistakes of uncut wire, as we met with at Bullecourt. We’re under Plumer now. As you know, he’s a Shop man, a gunner. And what’s more, we’ve got the advantage, very much so, in numbers of guns, over the old Hun. And I think there will be more surprises for him. Now, cheer up your men with what I’ve told you.”

  Leaving the routine work to Sergeant Rivett, Phillip rode about the countryside, deeply interested in everything he saw—new wire cages, sign-posted from the front, Prisoners this way; tracks For Walking Wounded, leading to underground dressing stations; other tracks marked by black arrows pointing towards the Ridge, scores of them, all lettered and numbered. It appeared that every brigade, battalion, company, platoon, section, and man of the assault had a special job, learnt, practised and rehearsed many times. He began to appreciate the enormous a
mount of work the Staff had to do. Large models of the Ridge had been made, railed off, and surrounded by duck-board walks, so that every private soldier, gunner, driver, sapper, airman, and hospital orderly could see what was to happen. That was, he thought, a splendid idea, probably devised by some junior officer of 1914, who had risen up to be a G.S.O. Suddenly the idea came, I could do a job like that.

  The models gave everyone an idea of the whole thing: this knowledge would help to open up the mind, he said, of the private soldier, hitherto treated more or less as though he were a bullock, having no intellectual life at all, because he had never been allowed to know what was to happen, like a convict in prison.

  “I’m with you all the way there, Sticks. Why not give a talk to the company, on the difference between 1914, 1915, the First of July? You know, how we all have to learn by experience.”

  Before the talk, Phillip bought from the E.F.C. two tins of mixed biscuits, which he distributed to the men, through their section sergeants. “Good old Sticks,” he heard—“He’s a lad, is Sticks”—and felt a fraud.

  2 Sat Gave a lecture, felt feeble. Contrast today with old days, Loos, etc. Nothing left to chance this time. Objectives are limited. The guns will blast away, troops advance; pause for more blasting; then advance further. Everything is foreseen, from our side at any rate: the bones of Loos have become chalk, the Somme dead are soil again: their sacrifices were not all in vain. Almost the fear of death is overcome, certainly depression. The lonely soldier is a rarity, as far as one can see. New Zealand and Australian troops, who never salute, give out feelings of zest and power. Even so, I am still a stranger in this land of 1914, which haunts me.

  Widow-making guns and howitzers hung with black bast netting. Flight after flight of scout planes passes over.

  The fine weather of early summer continued. Everywhere in fields of rising corn poppies grew, whole fields as though red with blood. On the afternoon of Sunday, June 3, the King’s birthday, there was a trial barrage, which broke with thunderous suddenness. Over rising country to the east arose palls of dust and smoke, hiding the line of earth and sky. Phillip watched with fascination almost sexual as he recalled the terrors of that sky-line on the morning of Hallo’e’n, 1914, when, with ammunition which did not fit the magazines of rifles, the London Highlanders advanced against the unknown terrors of war. He felt ghost-like; almost regretted that the war might end; for it was said that over 2,000 guns were massed below the slope of ground from Hill 60 in the north to Plugstreet Wood in the south, along twelve thousand yards of front. There were mines, too, all along the German front position. Some ran half a mile underground, a hundred feet deep, packed with up to ninety-five thousand pounds of ammonal, blastine, and gun-cotton. Their deep shafts were often lined with steel cylinders, and all had notice boards with DEEP WELL painted on them. They had strange names mixed up with English ones, Hollandscheschuur, Maedelstede Farm, Peckham, Kruisstraate, Spanbroekmolen, Ontario Farm. He had heard about them in conversation with all sorts of junior officers in the crowded back areas, as he rode north and west, interested in all he saw, followed by Morris on the grey mule. Everything his eyes saw held interest and wonder, as he moved among tunic-shoulders embroidered with many divisional devices—green shamrock of the 16th (Irish), lilac butterfly of the 19th (Western), red circle and Maltese Cross of the 23rd, red-and-white check on waggons and limbers of the 25th, the bloody hand of the 36th (Ulster), the white bar across various coloured squares of brigades of the 41st, the 8-pointed white star on a black square bordered by blue of the 47th (London) Division, mobilised in August 1914—his division of long, long ago—where were the old faces of Wimbledon, Bisley, and Crowborough? The red little, dead little army was no more. The Empire was now in France—the silver fern of New Zealand, the black triangle of the Australians; down south the maple leaf of Canada, and the springbok of South Africa. This was the life! In the everlasting movement of wheel, hoof and foot raising the dust of the greatest occasion the world had ever known—and yet––––

  And yet, underneath all the sun-burn and the laughter—hundreds of thousands of secret thoughts passing to and from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia—the sea between the young condemned and the old. But the old were condemned, too, as he thought that he would never go home again. Here in Flanders, where the poppies grew in Noman’s-land, was The Garden of Sleep.

  It was afternoon when he arrived back at camp to find the limbers packed by a complacent Sergeant Rivett.

  “Where have you been, Sticks?” asked Hobart. “Damn it, man, this is Y day, and no time to go joy riding!”

  Watches had been synchronised during his absence, at noon.

  *

  At twilight he led the limbers to their emplacements, and returned without incident to the picket line. The summer evening shaded into dusk. Small moths fluttered in his tent, tenuous as a parent’s thoughts. Except for an occasional flash and boom, quietness settled over the level land below the Ridge.

  The night seemed to be fecund with death-thoughts: a hundred thousand minds dreading goodbye. Thunder clouds loured; twilight went heavy, lightning repeatedly shattered the dark glass of heaven, rain lashed down, to make each man waiting in the assault trenches more lonely than before.

  Drinking the third mugful of whiskey and chlorinated water alone in his tent, he felt a longing to lift, suddenly, all fears and sadness from them—release them—cry that a miracle of thought had happened, that all could go home. How easy to feel like that, cushy in a tent, with damn-all to face! Like Father, lying back in his armchair, and killing Germans with his mind. While he sat in a tent, saving them all with his mind! Vain feeling, soft feeling, coward feeling, whiskey feeling! What did anything matter?

  Carrying the Decca and box of records, he went to visit a neighbouring transport officer with whom, the day before, he had split a bottle of champagne outside the Expeditionary Force Canteen below Neuve Église, beside the light railway, while sitting on the grass.

  It was now after midnight. The moon climbed a clear sky. The Germans were searching back areas; British counter-batteries were replying. As he walked towards his friend’s tent, the sky flushed over the Ridge, there was a rumbling roar—a German ammunition dump going up somewhere.

  He found his friend in a camouflaged tent, playing Patience by the light of a candle. At once the two began to enliven one another with thoughts of their present happy life. Phillip was shown an item in Comic Cuts, the Corps news-sheet.

  “Read that, old boy! And then ask yourself if this isn’t Fred Karno’s Army!”

  Reading it, he imagined an old professor with flat service hat, tie awry, spectacles, grey hair fringing collar, at work in an attempt to brighten up the war.

  There is evidence that Flanders has been, in prehistoric times, the scene of other engagements. In one area the fossil remains of a mammoth have been uncovered, together with flint implements used either to kill the beast or to cut it up. Unfortunately the entire skeleton could not be excavated, but enough has been salvaged to show that it was an unusually good specimen. The district where it was found is rich in remains of prehistoric man.

  “Well, mein prächtig kerl,” said Phillip, feeling himself to be like All Weather Jack as he poured from a bottle he had brought along with him. “They’ll be diggin’ up the remains of some of our poor old donks in a thousand years’ time, what? Findin’ oxidised Mills bombs and bits of guns and limbers, and wonder who we were, and what we were scrappin’ about. Cheer ho! Knock that back, we mustn’t let the talkin’ stop the drinkin’!”

  After half a bottle had disappeared, the following dialogue took place.

  “Did you hear that Broncho Bill’s back?”

  “Who’s he when he’s at home, mein prächtig kerl?”

  “Haven’t you heard of Broncho Bill?”

  “Would I bloody well ask if I had?”

  “All right, all right, keep your hair on! Cheerio!”

 
; “Chin chin. Who’s Broncho Bill?”

  “I’ll tell you if you’ll listen!”

  “I am bloody well listening! Get on with it.”

  “I will, if you’ll give me a chance. Right! Cheerio!”

  “Cheerho!”

  “Fancy not having heard of Broncho Bill! I can’t get over it!”

  “Would you like to hear my gramophone for a changed?”

  “What’jer mean?”

  “Change from Broncho Bill, mein prächtig kerl.”

  “But I haven’t told you yet!”

  “Well, go on, then! I won’t say a word. Continuez, mon ami!”

  “Right. Broncho Bill’s an Australian deserter, who’s been playing merry hell with the Area Commandant, the A.P.M., and the Military Police for over a year. They say he was an actor before the war. His first known exploit was breaking into some officers’ quarters, and pinching a uniform and some blank chit books and a rubber stamp. He went to various Field Cashiers’ officers, and drew monthly advances for half a dozen books, each with its forged name, saying he was the second-in-command of his battalion. Then he pinched a car and went to other paymasters, and did the same thing again, several times, in fact.”

  “Wasn’t he caught?”

  “Yes, with some other deserters he’d palled up with, having a tremendous binge in Hazebrouck. They were put under arrest, but Broncho Bill escaped, leaving his pals in the prisoners’ cage. The M.P.’s looked everywhere for him, but he’d vanished. Wait a mo’! Three days afterwards a hell of a poshed up redcap sergeant with a black Kaiser moustache reported to the R.S.M. at the cage, and showed an order to take the prisoners away to court-martial. The warrant was in order, so the R.S.M. handed them over, and they were never seen again. The M.P. sergeant was Broncho Bill disguised!”

  “Good lord! What a lad!”