Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  “Where’s Downham now?”

  “Gone to Pop. We’re under orders to move at twelve hours’ notice. We’re transferred back to Fifth Army.”

  “What, going south again?”

  “No. Gough’s come up here. He’s in command of the Ypres push.”

  “What’s happened to Plumer? Stellenbosched?”

  “Damned if I know. Old Plum’s been here for two years, and knows the Salient like the palm of his hand. I suppose he’s got the sack because he didn’t push on at once when we got on the crest of Messines. If Gough had been in command, he’d have put the cavalry through.”

  “So we’re back under the old mud-balled fox!”

  This was a reference to the dragging brush of the fox which was Fifth Army sign. All the Armies, with Corps and Divisions, had their stencilled devices. Fourth Army sign was a boar’s head, adopted by General Rawlinson after a leave spent in the South of France boar hunting. It was rumoured that the General had brought a young boar back with him, as a pet. It lived at Army Headquarters, with the name of Rawly. The Fifth Army had been formed after July the First, and had soon gone into the mud of the Ancre Valley.

  “Any idea where we’re going?”

  “Brigade says Proven.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Other side of Poperinghe. Now there’s a bon town! Ever been to ‘La Poupée’? You get a dam’ fine dinner there for five francs, or did, when I was there at the beginning of ’sixteen.”

  “I see. Well, have you got anything for me to do?”

  “Damn all.”

  “I’d rather like to see Armentières, while I’ve got the chance.”

  “What the hell d’you want to go to a place like that for? Oh, another Cook’s tour! I’ve never been able to understand what you find to interest you when you go off by yourself.”

  “It’s all right if I have a horse?”

  “I don’t care what you do.”

  He went to the picket line. There Morris told him that he had had the bay mare saddled up, but Sergeant Rivett’s orders were that it was to stay on the line.

  “That’s right, sir!” said Rivett, cheerfully. “Major’s orders, sir!”

  “That I’m not to have a horse?”

  “The major’s orders were that no charger was to be sent to railhead. Your servant Barrow has gone back to a gun section.”

  “Oh.” After awhile he asked how things had been during his absence.

  “Oh, we’ve managed pretty well, I think, sir.”

  “Good. No casualties, or anything?”

  “We did have some trouble with air-raids at night. However, we scattered in time.”

  “I want Morris to bring the bay mare to my tent in ten minutes. And to accompany me on a mule.”

  “Very good, sir. Oh, by the way, Driver Nolan is absent without leave.”

  “Nolan?”

  “That’s right, sir. Since mid-day stables, in fact.”

  “Perhaps he’s about somewhere.”

  “He left the lines without my permission, sir. He and Cutts.”

  Phillip realised what Rivett was thinking: almost hoping, to judge by his alert expression. Surely Nolan wouldn’t be such a fool as to desert? And with Cutts, of all people!

  “I’ll be away about an hour, sergeant. Don’t do anything about it, should they come back while I’m away, will you?”

  He rode north along a lane, past fields where hay had been cut and was now being carted from cocks, to Oosthove farm, turning right-handed over the small Warnave river, in the direction of the ruins of the deserted industrial town of Armentières, lying grimly to the east. The land in front of him was low-lying, consisting of water-meadows beside and within an ox-bend of the river Lys, where old peasants in sabots and dark clothes, the men in peaked caps, worked slowly with horses and long carts like shallow boats on wheels almost up to the sites of batteries and other congestions of war. How they must hate their land being mucked up, he thought, as he saluted one old man with a long white moustache walking as slowly as his horse on the worn grass beside a thorn hedge. He got no response.

  Following the bend of the river, he came to what was apparently the Corps laundry, with women hanging out greyback shirts and vests and long woollen pants on wire lines. Near the building some soldiers were arguing with a screeching old woman, and going nearer, he saw what the trouble was. Several lengths of screw-pickets had been lashed together to clear drains choked with shirts and pants. A sergeant told him that the women had done it, “as an underhand means of demanding higher wages”. Inside a shed adjoining was a large and heavy machine which, his informant said, was a Foden Disinjector. Asked what it was, he replied that it was to destroy parasites in uniforms.

  “Oh, a delousing machine, sergeant? What a queer name. Wonder what it means. Does it chuck out the crumbs?”

  “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “Don’t you know the army slang for lice?”

  “I was the manager of a West End laundry before I joined up, so I’m afraid I am not entirely conversant with army parlance, sir.”

  Phillip felt a little scornful of his superiority, akin to that of Rivett. “Well, your Disinjector is better than the fizzing sticks of cordite we used in the crutch of our trousers in ’fourteen, sergeant.”

  He rode on towards the town, stopping next at some sheds, outside which men of the Labour Corps were making mats of old bean-stalks and wire. He asked if it was for camouflage, and was told that they were Malay mats, to cover duckboards, and deaden the noise of footfalls. This made him wonder if the coming attack was to be made at night.

  He was now in Belgium, having crossed the frontier; and reaching the Ypres-Messines-Armentières road at Le Bizet, went on into the town. Many of its buildings were in ruins. Walls everywhere were pocked by shell fragments. Evacuated by the civilian population, many of the houses were locked up. Notices against house-breaking and looting were tacked on every door. Lean dogs and cats slunk about. Looking through a barred, basement window, he saw mildewed furniture stored there, and on one table a box of matches which had fallen open with damp.

  There was an observation post of a howitzer battery up a factory chimney beside the Lys, with a lift to the top. The lift was a wooden platform suspended on wires to pulleys, and worked by ropes. After talking with the gunner officer, he was invited to go up with him. The lift was without sides or rails, it swayed, jolted, jarred, and at one place it stuck in the chimney. At the top, just below the rim, where the wind passed gently roaring, a couple of bricks had been removed; and resting field glasses in the small space, he looked across many lines of trenches and belts of rusty wire stretching over a flat green country threaded with dykes and streams, and small clumps of trees about farms. In the farther distance chimneys and buildings half dissolved in haze were the towns of Commines and Wervique, connected by the river wandering into the east; and beyond them, to the north, across rising ground made dark by woods and forests, lay the ridge dominating the Ypres Salient, from Zonnebeke to Passchendaele and Staden, the first objective, said the gunner, of the coming campaign to push the old Hun out of Belgium. The plan was to reach Thielt, Bruges, and the submarine base at Zeebrugge, and then, with the right flank guarded by the river Lys with the towns of Menin, Courtrai, and Ghent on its banks, to let the cavalry through to the Dutch border.

  *

  “We won’t ’ave no more trouble over our swingle-tree chains not being burnished for inspection, not now, sir,” said Morris, on the way back. “Driver Nolan’s been an’ gone an’ won a special set from one of the Fred Karno’s lot recently come from ’ome. They was so shiny they looked almost nickel-plated.”

  “How did he manage it, Morris?”

  “It was during the wind-up in the hick-aboo, when them Goothers come over an’ dropped their eggs. Twelve pair ’e snatched, the ’ole caboodle, sir. The other lot kep’ them for inspections, a spare set like. Nolan’s idea is to use ’em for our transport, and also to ’ire ’e
m out to others, at a franc the chain. ’E’s flogged ’em to the section. Each driver put a franc in the kitty, so’s the section owns ’em, and will git the rhino for ’iring. So Nolan’s pouched twenty francs. Wiv that sum innisat fer safety, like, he slings ’is ’ook ter ther Free Pipes at Romarin wiv’ ’is China, Cutts. Sergeant Rivett’s ravin’, sir, says ’e’ll get ’em both court-martial’d, sir.”

  “What’s a China, Morris?”

  “What we calls a mixing chum, sir.”

  On his return Phillip read General Instructions for the Courts-Martial Section in his copy of General Routine Orders; then he went to see Pinnegar, saying that he ought to get Nolan and Cutts back before the military police got hold of them. Pinnegar, who was mess president, suggested that he take the Maltese cart and buy some stores at the Expeditionary Force Canteen at the Duke of Connaught Camp, on the Leinster Road leading to Neuve Église. Some tinned chicken, tongue, pork sausages, and pâté de fois gras, as well as vegetables, bread, and a dozen of whiskey. The absentees at the Three Pipes could be brought back, hidden in the cart.

  Phillip thought that the Maltese cart was too small, so he took a limber as well; and the two roysterers, hidden under the canvas cover, were brought back a few minutes before Major Downham, riding Prince, whose mouth was flecked with froth, returned to camp. By that time Cutts and Nolan, less their driver’s-boots, which had been stolen, lay side by side in a spare tent put up near the baled hay at one end of the picket line.

  “I think you ought to put Drivers Nolan and Cutts under arrest, sir!”

  “I beg your pardon, Sergeant Rivett?”

  “I would have done so, had you not expressly ordered me not to do so, sir.”

  Phillip replied quietly, “I think I’ll be able to deal with them, without any fuss, Sergeant Rivett.”

  “I mean to say, sir, it is within my province to maintain discipline, since most of the burden of administrating the transport personnel so far has fallen upon me. Therefore, sir, I consider that they should be put on charge, and brought before the Officer Commanding.”

  “That will mean a court-martial, possibly, Sergeant Rivett.”

  “I still think that they should be put on charge, sir. I can’t accept responsibility for them.”

  “Now I’m back, I take the matter out of your hands, Sergeant Rivett.” When the man standing before him did not reply, Phillip went on, “Cutts has been badly shell-shocked, or had the guts knocked out of him in childhood, spiritually the same thing, as I told you. Nolan was through First Ypres in my regiment, the Gaultshires. He’s been out here for nearly three years, without leave. Also he has bouts of malaria. He was in South Africa with the Seventh division before the war.”

  Sergeant Rivett pursed his lips. “It seems to me that the ‘old soldier’ excuse can get away with anything!” There was partial challenge in his manner as he looked straight at his officer. “I mean to say, sir, just because a man happened to be in the Army before the war, the ‘refuge of the destitute’, I think was how they were regarded——”

  Phillip walked away. What was it Father Aloysius had said, “Objects of our own hate arise from wounds within us”. If Rivett had been through hell he would be at least sympathetic to others who had suffered more than he had. By God, Downham too! He hesitated: he must not feel scorn of Rivett because he was inexperienced; and returned to where the sergeant was still standing, to say quietly, “I appreciate that you have the well-being of this section at heart, Sergeant Rivett, so I will speak to Nolan and Cutts first thing in the morning. Will you bring them to me immediately after early stables.”

  A spruced-up, almost jaunty Nolan was marched up behind Cutts by the sergeant. It was a fine summer morning. Caps off: attention.

  “Drivers Nolan and Cutts, sir.”

  Nolan had on a new pair of driver’s boots; Cutts wore a down-at-heel pair of marching boots, obviously thrown away by somebody, with puttees. His heavy clean-shaven brown face had a sagged and mournful appearance, his dark brown eyes were heavy with fear; in contrast to Nolan, who had cut the ends of his moustache and waxed the stubs into little upstanding points.

  “At my request, Sergeant Rivett is not bringing a charge, at the moment. So I’ll get to the point. You know the possible penalty, don’t you, Nolan?”

  “Well, sir——”

  “Do you, or don’t you?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “What have you to say?”

  “I knew what I was doing, sir. Permission to say something more, sir.”

  “Well?”

  “I wouldn’t have gone off had we been in the line, sir.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Cutts?”

  Wretched eyes lifted a moment to officer-face; Adam’s apple jerked about; jaws silently champed; hands clasped tightly; full lips wobbled; mouth opened, no words came.

  “I don’t think you’ve been fair to Sergeant Rivett, you two men. He looks after you in the section very well, and has never crimed a man in all the time we’ve been out here. So you take advantage. If we don’t take you before the C.O., what happens when it gets about? The sergeant may lose his stripes. I may get sent back to the base as incompetent, and perhaps lose my commission. But this is a volunteer citizen army, or was when you joined up. I think you both ought to apologise to Sergeant Rivett. But let it be understood that if it happens again, you’ll be for it.”

  “Yes, sir! Sergeant Rivett, I ask pardon.”

  Cutts began to tremble, then to shake. Sobs broke from him. Phillip walked away, saying to Nolan, “Look after your China.”

  *

  Early one morning of threatening rain the company moved north, by way of Neuve Église and Dranoutre, to the area of the Monts de Flandres which dominated the plain around them. Once again the red, black, and white striped wooden privy was a sight remarked by many, as it was borne on the last limber through Locre, lying between the Scherpenberg and Mont Rouge. These low flat hills of gravel and sand topped by a scrub of various thin trees, hid powerful telescopes trained upon the almost imperceptibly sloping ground of the Salient rising to the Flanders Ridge seven miles away to the east.

  “I bet the Germans will recognise this schissen-hausen,” said Pinnegar, riding beside Phillip. “They know where they left it, near Achiet-le-Grand, and that we’ve come from there.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I am! The Germans know more about us, than we know about ourselves!”

  By taking minor farm roads and lanes they arrived in the late evening west of Poperinghe. Remained three final, weary, dusty miles along the road to Dunkerque, before they came to their destination, the oakwoods about Proven. Here were hundreds of acres of tents and semi-circular iron huts, arranged in camps with names like Portland, Putney, Pimlico, Piccadilly, Partridge, Paddington, and Pardon.

  “Piffle and Putrid would be more like it,” remarked Pinnegar, for the congested sight added to the spirit of weariness. The air of summer, which as the column passed through fields of ripening corn, beet sugar, and flax, surrounding old red-brick farmhouses among barns, middens, and moats, had given an illusion of freedom, but now it was tainted by the smell of incinerators. Everywhere the undergrowth was trodden flat, the place made barren.

  They were billeted in Parkhurst, the name of a prison in the Isle of Wight, and just about as appropriate, said Pinnegar, who with Lucky Lukoff, the elderly South African, was off on a binge to Poperinghe.

  Downham had discovered in the Camp Commandant an old schoolfellow, and had invited him to dinner, so the remaining officers were not given leave. Jules did his best with an omelette made of ducks’ eggs, followed by tinned chicken, tinned cream, and tinned peaches. Downham and the staff-captain shared a bottle of champagne, the other four drank whiskey and chlorinated water. Gunfire buffeted the air within the iron shelter.

  After dinner, bridge was proposed. They would cut for the two odd-men-out. At once Bright said he didn’t wa
nt to play, got up, pushed back his chair and left the hut without a word.

  The others cut for odd man out. Phillip lost, and went quietly to a far corner of the hut, where his servant had put up his camp bed, undressed, got into his sleeping bag, and turned his face to the corrugated iron wall.

  But not to sleep. Hopeless thoughts passed through his mind. At last, seeking relief, he turned over and watched the players in the light of several candles stuck in bottles. The flames were shimmering, gunfire must be vibrating them, not a draught, otherwise they would be flickering. At last the game was over, the Sparklet siphon hissed, the staff captain had a final drink, then Downham went through the door with him and the two others, new men whose names he did not know. They had joined while he was on leave. It was good to be alone again. He was about to hop out and blow out the candles when the door opened again, and Downham strode furiously towards him, chain-spurs jingling.

  “You and Bright are a couple of yobs. Bloody manners, both of you. Dammit, man, haven’t you learned anything during the time you’ve been in the Army? The Camp Commandant was our guest!”

  “I was feeling pretty dull, and didn’t want to affect the party. I’ve been up since four this morning, and have not felt very well all day.”

  “Even so, why didn’t you ask permission to go to bed, instead of slinking off? You had no idea of how to behave when you first came to the office, and you’ve learned nothing since, that’s fairly obvious! You’re slack, you leave everything to your sergeant; if you don’t make an immediate improvement, I shall get rid of you. Now take this as a final warning!”

  “Excuse me,” mumbled Phillip. He ran to the door, and was sick outside. The feeling of relief was great. “I think it was those ducks’ eggs, they seemed suspicious to me. Ducks feed in all the filthy drains out here.”