Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  “Each eingreif division, arriving behind the enemy division already in line, comes at once under command of the general officer of the fighting division, regardless of seniority. The man on the spot knows the form, as it were, and so the fresh troops are placed at his disposal.

  “That, broadly speaking, is the tactical form for the enemy. We shall deal with it as it deserves, before the break-out. Our job is to bring these eingreif divisionen forward into our cockpit, and break them there, by the combined fire-power of our infantry, gunners, and machine gunners, while our fresh divisions prepare for the next detonating bite into the palm of the unclenched mailed fist.”

  The lecturer drank from a glass of chlorinated water, and shuddered.

  “After the lecture, we shall be going to a model of the battlefield. It covers two acres. There we shall be able to see, to scale, the lie of the land. I am indebted to a French colleague, Capitaine Delvert, for this description of the country lying south of the Moeres, reclaimed fen land, which lies east and northeast of the Fôret d’Houthulst, in the French sector. This is a rough translation,

  ‘“It is a vast plain of grazing and arable, now in high summer a Joseph’s coat of green and of yellow hectares of corn. It is traversed by many lines of hedges and rows of trees, plantations of oak and fir, amidst which stand, half hidden, red roofs, church spires, and windmills turning to the breezes from the sea. In this land the water-table is a metre below the surface, sometimes less. As it is not practicable to dig dug-outs as in a terrain of chalk, it is to be expected that under the farmhouses and other buildings the cellars have been used as bases for blockhouses of steel and concrete massively laid and therefore hidden within the shuttering of brick walls’.”

  The notes were put in a tunic pocket, almost leisurely. Every eye watched the marmoreal face, with its high forehead covered by short, unbrushed hair. Phillip, elbows on knees, felt inspired to some wild and unformulated heroic action. Even so, he could not think, even, of himself wearing above his heart one of the ribands worn by his hero.

  “Now with your permission I shall deal shortly with the second phase of the battle, the break-out. So far in this war neither side has been able to make a wide enough breach in what in former times was the square of resistance, and in mediaeval history the armour, to enable its own armour to pass through, with supplies and all subsidiary services. Supplies and services need railways and main roads, so the breach must be wide. Since the war became static, every battle undertaken and prepared to make a breach in the opponent’s armour has failed—the Germans at First and Second Ypres, the British at Loos, the Somme, and Arras; the French in Champagne. Now, at what is likely to be known as Third Ypres the question may well be asked: Will our men be able to push through five fortified lines of enemy wire and concrete, having neutralised the enemy artillery, and reach that distant skyline overlooking the Plain of Flanders to Bruges and Ghent, and beyond the mist, Antwerp and the Dutch frontier?”

  There was complete silence in the audience. Five fortified lines of enemy wire and concrete … shades of Loos, Hindenburg Line, and the Somme!

  “We know our enemy. We have no illusions about his ability and courage. But we do know that he is nearing the point of exhaustion, after the wastage of his ‘blood bath’ of the Somme, which caused his Higher Command to ask for peace terms six months ago. What will be his position when we have blasted him off the last point of observation upon the Salient, whence, for nearly three years now, he has looked down on our every movement of horse and waggon, every puff of steam at railhead, every shovelful of earth thrown up below him? So confident has he sat in his security, that he has used the Salient as a training school for his gunner cadets, using not targets of canvas as our cadets have on Salisbury Plain at home, but living soldiers who never wanted to be where they were, but who through sheer guts and if you like stupidity, never knowing when they were beaten, have remained in the Salient during more than a thousand days and nights of hell, showing such metal that in the end they cannot but win the war.”

  There were murmurs of approval in the front rows; but impassivity among the regimental officers behind. They’d had some, thought Phillip, looking at ‘Spectre’ standing straight and still and impassive.

  “The Flanders plain behind and below the Passchendaele-Staden rise is only a little more than thirty-three miles in width, from the sea-coast to the Dutch frontier. There are only two main-line railway systems crossing the plain laterally. When we have broken out of the Salient, gentlemen, a day’s march will bring the Ypres-Roulers-Thourout railway under howitzer fire, leaving the enemy only the lines through Ghent and Bruges. Once the railway junction at Bruges is dominated by our guns, Zeebrugge with the rest of the Belgian coast will be untenable, and the end of the war will be in sight.”

  The lecturer clicked his heels, bowed to the senior officers in the front row, and walked off the platform.

  *

  Studying the model of the terrain to be fought over, in a field outside the town, Phillip suddenly realised why certain points of high ground were so important. If you were seen by a sniper, you were shot. If your platoon was seen, it was machine-gunned. If your company or battalion advance was in full view of a hidden man with telescope, map with co-ordinated references, and telephone with direct line to a battery concealed in a fold of ground behind—out of sight of your own observers—he could ring up and give the code reference from his photograph-map, and your company, or battalion, or transport would be blown to hell, out of the blue.

  But even if you advanced safely and yet one of your flanks was not secure—the enemy there not destroyed or neutralised—the enemy could shoot you from the side, or if you went on, in the back. This meant that your flank was turned: you would have to re-align your men at least forty-five degrees, to be able to shoot at the enemy on your flank. Meanwhile the advance would peter out: and the angled lines of stoppage would form a salient. But if your flanks were secured, and you could advance through the enemy’s position, you would turn his flank, and to save his formation he would have to retire. But once his line was breached, his scattered soldiers would not be able to protect the soft, almost civilian organisation of supply behind his line. And if the enemy had no reserves to come up and form a new line, the war would be over for him.

  *

  “So you ‘decided you’d go to’ a Staff lecture, did you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But that was hours ago. Why are you back so late?”

  “I had a talk with the lecturer afterwards, sir.”

  “Just like your cheek! You ‘had a talk with the lecturer afterwards’. Who do you think you are, going up to a Staff Officer?”

  “He came up to me, sir. He’s an old friend of mine.”

  “How do I know you’re not telling lies again?”

  Phillip did not reply. He felt steely towards the red-face: but also he wanted permission to return to Poperinghe.

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  “Major West, of the Gaultshires, now attached to G.H.Q.”

  “How did you come to know him?”

  “I met him first at Loos. Later he was my C.O. on the Somme. Also, I’ve met him in London, when I came back. By the way, he’s asked me to dine with him at the Aigle d’Or.”

  “How do I know you don’t just want to get hold of a tart?”

  “Well, sir, I’d hardly come back all the way just to ask your permission for that, would I?”

  Downham laughed. “You’re a bit of a card, aren’t you? All right, only mind you’re back tonight. There’s the Army Commander’s inspection tomorrow. No more rusty chains, or you’re for it!”

  “We’ve got the brightest chains in the division!”

  “I hope so. Well, if you can’t be good, be careful!”

  “Many thanks, mein prächtig kerl!” replied Phillip, with a quick salute, and quicker exit.

  *

  The two friends sat before the fire in a room in the Aigle d’Or after dinner,
a bottle of whiskey on the table before them. They were talking about war correspondents, and the difference between reality and appearances.

  “It will take years to see what’s happening now, in perspective, Phillip. It takes a long time for the truth to get into the history books, you know.”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean——” Phillip felt riven by chaotic ideas. “I mean, take ‘Sapper’s’ stuff——”

  “Oh, that’s for milksops at home, who haven’t the slightest idea of what’s happening. How can they? Even we see only a fractional aspect of the war. It will take thirty years before anyone taking part in this war, or age, will be able to settle down enough to write truly about the human beings involved in this war, let alone what really happened on the battlefield, and in the council chambers.”

  He helped himself to whiskey.

  “I once had ambitions to write a War and Peace for this age. But I shall not live to write it. Have you read Tolstoi? Then you haven’t begun to live clear of the crowd. Listen to me, and remember, in years to come, what I’m going to tell you. On this earth, every action produces its own reaction, every movement generates friction. Take the War Cabinet in London. There’s a constant struggle going on, a struggle of ideas between the soldiers and the politicians. All life is struggle, frustration, and pain—in all strata of life, from the crystals in cooling volcanic flows to the divisions within the highest minds and intellects among men. It’s the pattern of life. You told me just now that you can’t hit it off with your present C.O. I don’t want to hear any details. You may think that your experience is unique—so it is, in a way—but it is also only a part of the general struggle. Every man wants his own way. The Chief has a hell of a time with Lloyd George, who wants more effort, which means troops, for the side-shows, while ‘Wullie’ Robertson and the Chief think that the Boche can only be beaten here. So the P.M. invariably qualifies what the Chief wants to do. It was the same with Joffre, and later, with Nivelle.”

  ‘Spectre’ West refilled Phillip’s glass, then his own. “Lloyd George doesn’t want another Somme, quite understandably.”

  “Do you think we’ll break through this time?”

  “What a question!”

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Why not? I know damn-all, anyway. It’s bound to be a hard fight first, to destroy the German reserves. The element of surprise is gone, you see. The enemy knows, generally, what’s going to happen. One of our objects is to prevent his reserves from being used in an attack on the French, who had such a pasting in Champagne that they’re virtually broken for the time being. It’s no secret.”

  “Yes, I heard that two army corps had set out to march to Paris——”

  “Two! A moderate estimate! But reverting to what you told me about your feeling of inability to be yourself with your present C.O. I’m afraid such clashes of temperament, or mental patterns, are inherent in human nature. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re an isolated case! It happens all the way up to the top. There’s Holland, Third Army’s M.G.R.A., for example. Holland was stellenbosched last spring for advocating that the preliminary bombardment should be in the nature of a surprise, with only two days pooping off before the assault. He wasn’t popular with G.H.Q. for that. Nor was his master, Allenby, who was shunted off to Palestine. As for the mute inglorious Napoleons in the lower levels, such as corps and division, they drop off like little green apples. It’s all a question of the lines of thought getting crossed. I remember Stanhope, G.S.O.2 Second Corps, telling me how he was rung up during the hard frost of January last, when the Corps heavies were ordered to the Arras front. Stanhope was asked why the devil he hadn’t got a move on. He explained that each 60-pounder gun required a double team of horses to pull it out, and after the exertion the horses were beat for twenty-four hours. He said what the guns really needed was to be dragged by a caterpillar tractor to a metalled road. To which the reply came from Army, ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about’.”

  “Good lord!”

  “One man’s problem can be completely unrealised by another.”

  “Why was Major-General Holland stellenbosched? Surely surprise is essential for success in an attack?”

  “Yes, but Holland’s idea involved the masking of batteries until forty-eight hours before the assault; and masking means no registration of targets. And to shoot off the map accurately requires maps of meticulous accuracy. If the thickness of the linen backing of a map were to vary by so much as one-hundredth of an inch it might mean a hundred yards over, or under. Then there are such things as air temperature, wind, and barometric pressure, all affecting the flight or parabola of a shell.”

  Later he said, “War is not all bad, you know. Through necessity, the war has got the nation on its feet—literally and metaphorically. Think of the advance in medical knowledge. When my hand was chopped off, the surgeon made a neat little job of it, leaving a symmetrical stump, tucking in the flaps of skin and sewing them up, like the end of a parcel. The result was that it suppurated, and in the old days I would have died of blood-poisoning, as it was called. But a young surgeon saw it in time, opened the wound and drained it, leaving the tissue to wither away in the open. In the same way, war opens up caches of ignorance. Of course all knowledge has to be paid for. It’s the privilege of our generation to help provide knowledge for the next generation. What more can a man ask than that sacrifice be asked of him for the well-being of his own sort? Personally, I should be sorry to think I’d survive the war.”

  Phillip wondered how much of Westy’s bitterness was due to being in love with his cousin Frances, when she did not love him. If only he could have met someone else, how quickly he would cast off his obsession, as he himself had done with the image of Helena Rolls. He stopped his thoughts, lest they be picked up.

  “Do you think the war will be over this year?”

  “Possibly. But next year we’ll have a better chance. Our opposite numbers across no-man’s-land are equally clever, or ignorant, as ourselves. They’re as determined as we are at reciprocal frustration and destruction. It’s a precarious balance, you know, a war of attrition. Who has the last platoon will win. Even then, the winner can only take over ruin. The French are very pessimistic, after the shock of their frightful beating in Champagne. Fifty-three French divisions were cut to pieces in the first twelve hours. Pétain told the Chief that he couldn’t count on his troops going over to the offensive. At the Paris conference last May, Lloyd George said, in effect, that the Somme mustn’t be repeated. Pétain backed him up. No advance in depth, he said, but only in breadth. Let the Boche come forward in counter-attack into the storm of steel from our guns. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, in other words. Hold on and destroy each bite into the Boche until the Americans arrive in 1918. Then break through the last crust and so to the Rhine.”

  “But I thought, from what you said at the lecture, that we’d get through to the Scheldt in no time——”

  “What else d’you think I could say? And d’you think I liked saying what I said? To chaps like yourself, who’ve been through a battle, and know what it really is like? Anyway, I know damn-all. Nobody knows anything. Even the Chief knows very little,” went on ‘Spectre’ West, pouring himself whiskey. “The trouble with his job is that he has to consider every conflicting opinion, its virtue and the defect of that virtue. Do you know that in the spring Lloyd George nearly succeeded in getting him placed under the orders of Nivelle? Nivelle had all the arrogance of his own peculiar ideas, the more so because he was without experience. All he had done so far was to get back from the Boche at Verdun, in two days against tired divisions sent down for a rest from the Somme, what the Boche had taken months to get. He sent in a plan to the Paris ‘Comité de Guerre, officieusement’, telling them how he could win the war! ‘The German Army will run away; they only want to be off,’ was his theme. For that he was promoted over the heads of Foch and other Army Group commanders, and Joffre was sacked.
And what was the result? Nivelle bust himself behind half a million French soldiers in a couple of hours against concrete and wire set in the chalk and stunted fir-trees of the Champagne. If Nivelle had had his way, Haig would have been put under him, and been ordered to bust us against the Hindenburg Line, in one mass attack in depth. No, I am not an admirer of Mr. George from Criccieth!” ‘Spectre’ pushed over the bottle.

  “Hear hear,” said Phillip, thinking that Father would be pleased if he could hear that.

  “You’ve got to have well-covered nerves to be a British Commander-in-Chief today. You’ve got to watch your step with everybody, from teetotal deputations who want to stop the soldier’s rum to coves like Horatio Bottomley and George Bernard Shaw. You fix a date for an offensive, wanting to get on while the going is good, in fine weather, in other words; then you learn that the French north of Boesinghe aren’t ready. So you lend them seventy thousand Chinese and other labourers to help make their gun emplacements. The French have over three hundred thousand, on leave, all the time now, you know, since the mutinies. God help us if the weather breaks, in this low-lying country, after we’ve tumbled it up with our guns. Yes, you’ve got to have a placid temperament to be the British G.O.C. in C. Have you noticed the shape of the Chief’s profile? His forehead goes back in a straight line from his nose. My nose, and yours also, make an obtuse angle with the forehead, which is vertical to the ground. Haig’s slopes back, like the Emperor Hadrian’s. But consider the jaw! Tremendous strength and determination to hold on to what he believes to be right! The wide-spaced eyes reveal breadth of view, which means comprehension of the views of others. He is a good servant, and a good master, without brilliance, thereby lacking the defects of brilliance. The Chief has character, believe you me! His powers, in so far as he has to do what others want him to do, are extremely limited. In Paris, the Quartier General rules, and not the ‘frocks’, or politicians; in London the Imperial General Staff and the Commander-in-Chief are ruled by the politicians. I can tell you one thing, only you must keep it to yourself. G.H.Q. did not know until this morning whether or not the push was to come off, even though the preliminary bombardment has begun. Not a word about this to anyone, mind!” He poured more whiskey into his glass.