Love and the Loveless

by Henry Williamson

  “Yes, the Chief was still in the dark, waiting for the War Cabinet to authorise the push. The P.M. very naturally doesn’t want a repetition of the Somme, as I said just now. He wants divisions sent to Macedonia, and to Italy, for his side-shows. At the same time, Mr. George wants an omelette, made of Boche eggs, in the Chief’s frying-pan over here, while fearing that the wrong eggs may get into the fire. Also, the Belgian coast must be cleared, declares Admiral Jellicoe, otherwise Tirpitz and his submarines will send us all to Davy Jones’ locker. So the Chief, doing his duty to the Old Firm of Frocks in Downing Street, hands on this omelette idea, somewhat scrambled by now, from Plum, who sat too long in the sun on Messines Ridge, five hours to be exact——”

  “I saw them, Westy. Plumer waited too long.”

  “He did. He certainly did! So the Chief says to Plum, ‘I’m lending your frying-pan to the Fifth Army of the Fox, so that it won’t happen again.’ He doesn’t exactly put it that way, of course, he says it with tact and friendliness. The trouble is, Plum knows the Salient like the palm of his hand; the Fox doesn’t. Plum has the southern flank, from Battle Wood to Plugstreet. He’s told to be ready to act offensively, north of the river Lys. ‘I shall have three fronts’, says the Chief, ‘my left facing north-east, my centre facing east, my right facing south-east. I want to be able to break out of whatever front behind which the enemy reserves are not disposed to meet me, and so take him unawares.’ At the same time, when he reads the Fox’s plans, the Chief thinks of what the Old Firm of Frocks in London told him about going forward bite by bite. So the Fox has been told to go steady, and, at the same time, that the two objectives are, first the skyline about the village of Passchendaele, then the Belgian coast.”

  The speaker swallowed his glassful, and poured more.

  “The Fox says, in effect, ‘I shall want twice the number of divisions to do that, Chief’, while Haig is thinking at the same time of what Jellicoe said about the alarming menace of German U-boats, while balancing it against what the P.M. said, and also what Pétain said about the state of the French Army, and how if the Boche knew what a state our gallant Allies were in they’d go through them so fast that there wouldn’t be even a frying pan, let alone eggs to make it! And that’s the theme of a novel I hope to write one day, to stand with War and Peace, bringing in all the causes and all the effects of a Great War that eventually brought the end of Christendom and let in the Barbarian.”

  “You mean the Germans?”

  “I do not mean the Germans! I mean that what happened to the City States in Greece will happen to the European Christian nations. Europe is fighting now exactly as the ancient Greeks fought among themselves, until they destroyed their homeland, and the barbarian moved in.”

  “But who will be the barbarian after this war?”

  “The spirit behind the mutinies in the French and Russian armies.”

  “But don’t they want to stop the war?”

  “That is the paradox. We want a third idea, Napoleon’s idea: we want the United States of Europe. Today, that is only an idea. Tomorrow—but you and I, my dear Phil, have no tomorrow. We have the honour to be of the European generation that——” He stopped. “No!” His eye stared with pale blue brilliance. “Courage, mon brave, courage! The British never, never will be slaves! You, my friend, are at the cross-roads! Remember this: ‘He who loses his life shall save it’. Put duty before self! That alone will carry you through to the end. He who forgets his own life shall enter into wider life! And remember, Phillip,” ‘Spectre’ took his hand, “you have a friend who believes in you. Hell, I’ve had too much to drink.”

  *

  Walking back to camp, while German bombers burred overhead, and flashes and crashes came from in front—events in the night made exhilarating by thoughts of Westy—Phillip felt a few spots of rain on his face. As though the rain was a signal, the eastern horizon flared up in a vast butterfly-flutter of light, as the British guns opened up in another phase of the preliminary bombardment.

  Chapter 13

  THE FOX OUT-FOXED

  DRAGGING clouds broke into rain on the night of July 31. Some said it was due to the gunfire. Two nights previously the sections had moved up to Ypres in darkness made wan by the light of the moon in its first quarter, Phillip following with the limbers. Everything he had experienced in war so far was diminished by the sinister feeling all around him as he rode through the Grand’ Place, despite the almost furtive activity among the ruins, where were hidden masked batteries of guns, including a 15-inch howitzer known as ‘Clockwork Charlie’ for its regular bombardment of Passchendaele station thirteen thousand yards away.

  The town was partly surrounded by a moat, along one side of which rose massive red-brick ramparts, said to have been built in Napoleonic times. The years of German shelling had not destroyed them. Within the high walling were tunnels, lit by electric light, and sand-bagged against blast. Here with legions of rats lived Companies of West Indian labourers who filled shell-craters with rubble from the ruins, among other labouring jobs.

  Although so much human life existed in the ruins, the spirit of desolation pervaded the place; its spirit was vacant and barren; nobody wanted to be there; the spirit of an unloved place was repellent with its smells of burnt cordite, mortar-and-hair dust, and chloride of lime. A psychical vacuum of lost life, old terror, and chronic hopelessness lingered in the crepuscular ruins. And yet, as one passed under the grey ragged walls of Cloth Hall and Cathedral, and came to the ruinous gape of the Menin Gate, just perceptible by the stone lions, couchant and pocked, on either side of the route, a faint illusion of life in the ruins called to one; for ahead lay nihilism. If, in the fossils of the town, life had floated in a void, now it had the steeliness of unendurable cruelty, which sought finally to deny life and happiness to all who moved above the ground, in any direction. One of many hundreds of thousands who had passed that way, Phillip proceeded, nervous animation of flesh and bone on innocent horseflesh because there was no alternative, while he remained unbroken.

  *

  The company guns were under the Divisional Machine Gun Officer for the barrage which was to begin with the assault. They were not to fire until zero hour. Aiming posts had been prepared, set up off the map, with direction by compass. Company battle-headquarters were in Paradise Row, at the far end of St. Jean, on the St. Julien road, five hundred yards behind the front line.

  This was Major Downham’s first time in with his own troops. While at Proven he had spent forty-eight hours in the line, attached to another brigade, but with no duties. He came back from that Cooks’ tour, Phillip noticed, with a pack filled with souvenirs—shell fragments, nose-caps, German rifle cartridge-clips, a German steel helmet. These went into a parcel to be posted home to Downham père at Tulse Hill, in the purlieus of the Crystal Palace, together with shirts and other underclothes to be washed. A pair of long woollen pants was wrapped around a dozen ounce-packets of various brands of ration tobacco, and a box of Belgian cigars. “That’ll kill Downham’s old man all right,” remarked Pinnegar. “Serves him right for having such a son.”

  Phillip returned from the battle-emplacements in Paradise Row beyond St. Jean and the rattle of a thousand wheels on the cobbled Place to the transport lines near Vlamertinghe, where the mill had been made into a Casualty Clearing Station, its walls hung with white sheets, its inner spaces lit by electricity revealing white operating tables and equipment as in an operating theatre in a London hospital. New sidings had been made from the main railway line, with names in the Flemish idiom—Bandaghem, Dosinghem, and Mendinghem. Areas for cemeteries had been wired off, and neat rows of graves prepared by Chinese labourers. Deep dressing stations had been made nearer the line, notably one in circular form, with tiers like an amphitheatre, under the Menin road, that straightness of fear which for three years had been under observation of enemy guns lifelessly between its fractured tree-stumps, revealing by day patches of pink mud, like the sores of the dead, where bricks had b
een tipped into shell-holes.

  Phillip had taken up rations and heavy boxes of S.A. ammunition on Y/Z night, although it had been arranged with Downham that he and Rivett should take turn and turn about. He felt that he could not trust the job to Rivett. The sergeant’s daily letters to his mother, exaggerating the nightly bombing, dangers just escaped, and general violence of life around him, showed that he was still very windy inside. And he was good at routine work, and reliable. If he got into real danger he might very well go sick, and a dud sergeant be sent up from the base to replace him, when it would be goodbye to the old free-and-easy life by day.

  Phillip told himself that he had the best of the bargain, three to six hours every night taking up limbers, and more or less free during the day.

  He slept through the opening barrage, which was at 3.50 a.m. By the time he was up, and had had breakfast, prisoners began to come down to the cages. Walking wounded, too. They told of success. Yet the steady rattle and crackle of small-arms fire told a different tale, he thought. These wounded had been hit on or near the first objective, which had been 200–300 yards across no-man’s-land. The barrage had been tremendous, a wall of crashing smoke and flame, lit by thermit flares and oil bombs lobbed over by trench mortars. One man told a strange tale of figures following behind the assault waves, unwinding broad pink tapes, laying them carefully among the grasses and old shell-holes of no-man’s-land grown with rushes. They didn’t stop at Jerry’s front trench, where upheaved brown earth made almost a straight line against the grass of no-man’s-land, “as though it had been measured off by a chain, sir”. Asked what the pink tapes were for, the wounded man said they had looked pink in the light of the bursting oil bombs, but were white. He went on to say that they were to mark the up-and-down tracks for the infantry and Yukon-pack carrying parties. There were parties of the Engineers carrying finger-posts, like those on the roads at home, painted white with black lettering. They had been made a proper job of. After a cup of tea he limped away, full of optimism, saying that Jerry had had it this time.

  “He means he has, sir,” remarked Nolan. “He’s got his blighty all right. They’ll be clearing the hospitals at the base of all cases. The Alleymans aren’t fools, they knew what was comin’, and have prepared accordingly. The fighting isn’t started yet, to my mind.”

  Phillip was always happy in the presence of Nolan. Nolan had been for more than one joy ride with him, replacing Morris. Nolan seemed to reciprocate the feeling of companionship, for he always volunteer’d to take the place of any man on the roster who had gone sick—as some drivers did occasionally, especially those who, Phillip deduced from their letters, had some sort of complications at home. It was no good taking your mother or your wife or sweetheart to war with you, which seemed to happen when things were one-sided, not truly right between you and your mother or girl. That caused anxiety, and anxiety undermined a man and made him a prey to fearful thoughts. He had made a discovery! Talismans, too, showed fear. Some men carried little Bibles in their tunic breast pockets, or lucky charms, including crucifixes. No, he must not think that. And yet, Mother had given him that crucifix, which had been in the top drawer of his bedroom at home ever since he had returned from Loos in October 1915. In 1914 he had felt so anxious about it, it was part of Mother. Now he felt easier because it was safe at home, and would comfort Mother, because he had worn it, if he was killed. Not that he thought he would be killed; but it was no good trying to avoid your fate by taking all sorts of precautions, such as a bullet-proof vest, a miniature breast-pocket Y.M.C.A. Bible, or three volumes of Francis Thompson’s poems tied round the stomach! If you were going to be killed, you would be killed.

  A good breakfast with a couple of stiff old-man-whiskies made all the difference to a point of view. And lighting his pipe, Phillip went away to enjoy a few moments quiet reflection in the red, white, and black “sentry” box, which he regarded as his most valuable possession in France. Several other officers had asked about it, including the C.R.E. of Division, a Staff Colonel with grey hair and mild paternal appearance. Should not the sentry box, he enquired, have been left for the Salvage Corps to collect? All enemy stores, he explained, automatically became Crown property. G.H.Q. Routine Orders were clear on this matter. He added that it was probably a unique specimen: the only sentry box with the Imperial Colours to be left behind in the retreat to the Hindenburg Line.

  “Sir, with all due respect, I fancy it is an Imperial latrine!” said Phillip, at attention.

  “Oh,” said the C.R.E. “That’s another matter.”

  *

  A message was brought by runner from Pinnegar, saying that company H.Q. had gone forward through Wieltje taking left fork of road through the village for the St. Julien road. They were at VENHEULE FARM, at a stated map reference.

  After this came another message from Major Downham, ordering him to be at the old company H.Q. in Paradise Row at 8 p.m., where he would receive further instructions. Acknowledge, the message ended.

  Phillip wrote in reply, giving time, code number of unit, and reference number, Message Acknowledged.

  No further news came from the line. He wanted to go to Divisional headquarters to see the Operations map outside the A.D.C.’s room in a canvas Nissen hut, but he was in command of the company cadre, which meant standing by for messages either from Downham at St. Jean, or from Brigade. He had seen such maps during Messines, coloured lines of objectives stuck with pins on which were paper flags, marking the advance.

  At flare light he set off through the Grand’ Place. Guns were now firing among the ruins. Soon he realised that the attack had not gone far, since enemy shells were womping around the Menin Gate. Lines of transport accumulated. Military police stopped any attempt to turn away for another route. They moved on, halted, moved on again. It was like a relay race, going through the last ruins before the Ramparts at intervals, drivers whipping their beasts.

  Someone had copped it, he saw, as he urged the drivers through. Most of the shells were now falling forward, along the Menin road. They trotted up the Frezenberg road, turning left-handed by a large notice-board at Potijze marked Savile Row, with a direction arrow to St. Jean. At the end of the village were the old company headquarters in front of Wieltje. There the company sergeant major was waiting with a runner, to show them the way. “Major’s a bit anxious, sir, about the ammo. coming up. So he sent me to fetch you. The sections are very low, sir.”

  “How did the attack go?”

  “Rough, sir. The Brigade got over the Steenbeek, but had to come back out of St. Julien. Enfilade fire from a line of pill-boxes held them up, they say.”

  He led up the left fork of the road through Wieltje, bumpy with tipped bricks. Its flat raggedness was blanched by guns firing among the ruins.

  “Jerry’s been strafing a bit tonight, sir. I fancy a lot of stuff’s coming from way up the Menin road. Looks as though the attack’s been held up on the right, same as ’ere.”

  “Held up?”

  “Yes, sir. The Brigade’s been held up on the Black Line since this morning.”

  Phillip had seen a map of the objectives: there were six positions, each with its system of outposts, trenches, communicating allees, and lines of concrete pill-boxes. The first four positions were heavily wired—and marked on the map with primary colours: Blue, Black, Green, Red. The Red was called by the Germans Flandern I. Behind it stretched Flandern II, along the crest overlooking the Salient. Flandern III was on the plain below, covering the towns of Roulers and Menin. After that, open warfare. It was said that the Red line was the final objective for the first day; then a pause to get the guns up, before going on to Passchendaele by the end of the week.

  Giant finger-flashes were playing the piano of hell behind the distant Gheluvelt plateau.

  “Yes, it looks as though the Alleyman has foxed the Fox with his dummy battery emplacements, sergeant-major.”

  Hardly had they crossed the old front line when a shell rushed down in a shriek besid
e the leading limber and he found himself falling sideways, the mare still under him, until its legs were above him. Fortunately she rolled away and he could free his other leg. He lay inert, thinking he was hit, but when the mare began to scream and struggle, fear made him roll clear. The sergeant-major helped him to his feet. By flash-lamp he saw that the mare had a leg smashed at the knee. The tendons were cut, too.

  “You’ll have to shoot her, sir.”

  Scraping mud from his hands, he shot between the eyes; and went on beside the sergeant-major, over the grassy road through no-man’s-land.

  “There bin a lot of horses killed here today,” said the sergeant-major. “King Edward’s Horse in particular. They got near the Steenbeek, then ’ad to dismount and run for it. Cavalry’s worse than the tanks for this sort of fighting.”