The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “I don’t know. Bason said your name had gone in. The point is that I was gazetted on March the fourteenth last year, and you on March the twenty-fourth. It’s in the Army List.”

  “My dear One-piecee, you appear to forget that I was appointed second-in-command before you rejoined. So I am senior in service with the company. Help yourself to some whiskey, if you don’t mind drinking out of the bottle.”

  “I think you ought to tell Bason the truth.”

  “My dear One-piecee, do you want Bason and everyone else to know that you’re snowing the white feather? They will think that, you know. After all, I’m a man of thirty-five, and my wife is going to have a baby. And I’m going any moment to the Chinese Labour Corps, as an interpreter, so if you kick up a shindy, it will be obvious that you are trying to save your own skin.”

  “You told me you were twenty-five, when we were at Seven-oaks.”

  “Everyone lies about his age in the army. I did, to get in quickly. Well, go and tell Bason, if you feel like that. Only don’t be surprised if everyone thinks you’re yellow, will you? How are the pigeons? Why not go and see? I’m rather busy. Tootle-oo, One-piecee!”

  *

  Phillip had been appointed Pigeon Officer for the battalion. When Captain Bason had asked casually what he knew about birds, “of the feathered sort, of course, old sport”, and then said that the Adjutant had suggested him for the job of Pigeon Officer, he felt relief mingled with regret that he would not be with the men of his platoon any longer. They seemed to like him, and he did not want them to feel deserted.

  However, the job was only part-time, to last only until the attack. The birds arrived from the Corps Mobile Loft (which was built on to a London omnibus) in a large wicker basket strapped on the back of a despatch rider riding a Triumph motorcycle. The corporal showed Phillip how to take a bird out, by holding the legs placed backwards in the hand, together with the wing-pinions, and departed. Later, a bag of split peas, tares, limestone grit, and grain arrived from the Quartermaster. The birds were fed and watered from zinc trays attached to their baskets. They were to be taken into action housed in smaller baskets, one for each company. Having showed four chosen runners, one for each company, how to hold the birds, and to remove the aluminium leg-capsule for the message, the job of Battalion Pigeon Officer was practically ended.

  Now he went to look at the birds, which were kept in a pannier in a barn. One bird in the top compartment of the basket had laid an egg, while another in the lower section was trying to get at it, udging by the way it was croodling and looking up at the shiny white shell through the wickerwork. Did pigeons suck eggs? He decided to find out, and having taken the egg, put it in the lower section. At once the pigeon bowed to it, dropping its wings before straddling the egg and settling upon it, in one corner. While he was watching, Pimm, who was looking after the birds, joined him. Pimm had kept pigeons in civvy street, he said, and so had been given the job of carrying the advance basket, which was to accompany Phillip who, as the senior subaltern in the company, was to lead the attack.

  “That’s an old bird, a cock, sir,” he told Phillip. “Jimmy, I call ’im. I’ve been watching Jimmy. He wants only one more egg, and he’ll be happy. An old cock will always brood eggs; he love a squab, you see, and cares for it all right. Some people think pigeons too free with one another’s mates, in a manner of speaking, sir, but I’ve proved the contrary. Like a gander, sir, a cock pigeon will always look after a pair of young birds, what we call squabs, or some calls ’em squeakers. I love to see ’em, sir, with young ’uns. I used ’av an old cock what we called Romper, what used to caggle a hen away from another cock, not exclusive for the tread, like any old barnyard cockerel, sir, if you understand my meaning, but to get her to lay him a couple of eggs, in a nest he’d already prepared for them. Once laid, Romper never so much as looked at her, but cuddled them eggs between his ’ams until they was ’atched. What a daddy he was, too! Nothin’ was too good for them squeakers, and he kep’ by them until long after they was grown up, a feeding of them with ’is milk, sir.”

  “This old bird won’t have much chance to hatch that egg, I fancy.”

  “By rights Jimmy ought to be took out of the kit, sir. He won’t fly back to the Corps Mobile Loft, sir, but come back here, with any message. It’s home to a bird, sir, cock or hen, where their eggs is, what they’ve fixed on in the eye. Jimmy’ll be ’overing about back here, come to look for ’is egg.”

  “Poor old bird. What ought we to do with him?”

  “I’ll keep ’im back, sir, in the basket. He can come for a walk acrost Jerry’s lines with us, sir, like he was a mascot. Then Jimmy can come back with us when it’s all over, can’t you, Jimmy boy?”

  Phillip tried to ease his fears by telling himself that it was Cox’s wife and her unborn baby that mattered, and for this reason he would say nothing to Bason about seniority. With Pimm beside him, he would be all right. He would stick with his boys, and damn the captaincy. He went to see how they were, and sat with them and smoked his pipe in the barn, while the rain fell and the guns made a continuous rumbling; bringing the rain, everyone said.

  That night the battalion went into the line for the attack. There they spent the rainy darkness, each man laden with 66 lbs. of equipment, while the squalls lashed down, making white or rather grey their uniforms and rifles. Soon after midnight they filed out of the trench, and were brought back, to make what shelter they could in the wretched hour before dawn upon the streaming ground. Phillip made a fire and sat by it, waiting for daylight.

  In the morning everyone in the Ancre valley knew that the attack had been put off. Drivers astride mules drawing limbers shouted the news to G.S. waggon drivers; lorry drivers flogging ration cigarettes in estaminets near Amiens talked about it as they downed café-rhums made from coffee that was more than half chicory.

  “I believe,” said Bason, in the continuing silence of the German guns, “that Jerry knows all about this attack, and is waiting for us. They’re damned clever, you know, the Germans. Anyway, we’ve got two days now before Zero, but keep it under your hat.”

  *

  During the preceding month of May General von Bulow, commanding the Second German Army, had proposed from his headquarters

  at Bapaume “a preventive attack astride the Somme”. On 6th June he sent a report to O.H.L., the German Headquarters in the West, at Mezieres, containing the following:

  “It is said that the preparations of the British indicate an attack north of the Ancre on the projecting angle of the feste (super-fortress) of Gommecourt, and south of the Ancre upon the feste of Fricourt. In view of the ground and run of the trenches it is quite imaginable that he will only try to hold fast the front between these two points by artillery fire, but will not make a serious attack. This possibility is however provided for.”

  On 15 June, when the Kaiser visited Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria’s Sixth Army Headquarters at Douai, Lieutenant-General von Falkenhayn, the All Highest’s Chief of Main General Headquarters Staff, said that he could not understand why the British should attack on the Somme. In the event of success, he said, the further fighting would take place in Belgium, which would be devastated, a thing the Allies would not want; nor would they want Northern France, with its rich coal mines and iron industries, laid waste.

  Crown Prince Rupprecht stated that increased railway traffic had been noticed behind the British front on the Somme, together with many new artillery emplacements and assembly trenches; while camps had been built near Albert and on both sides of the Roye-Montidier railway, well to the south of Field-Marshal Haig’s back-areas.

  General von Below proposed that, should the attack on the Somme materialise, the British forces should be let through into a large salient or pocket, and there be encircled by attacks driven into the flanks.

  The Crown Prince Rupprecht then informed the Kaiser that agents’ reports had spoken of a British attack about Whitsuntide (11 June) but it had not materialised. T
his had puzzled his Intelligence Staff until they had received a report of a speech by Lloyd George, the British Minister for Munitions, to owners and workmen of munition factories on 2 June, where Lloyd George stated,

  “I am asked why the Whitsuntide holidays are to be postponed until the end of July. How inquisitive we all are! It should suffice that we ask for a postponement of the Holidays until the end of July. This fact should speak volumes!”

  The Crown Prince Rupprecht commented, “It certainly docs so speak; it contains the surest proof that there will be a great British offensive in a few weeks.”

  The speech of the Minister of Munitions had been reported in London morning newspapers of the 2 June; copies of which in due course had gone to Holland, and thence to Germany.

  The Crown Prince Rupprecht went on to say that, according to a report of an agent at The Hague, the British attaché there said that the offensive in the West would begin at the end of the month.

  *

  On 24 June, he wrote in his journal,

  A prisoner of the British 46th Division captured at Gommecourt stated that a 5-day bombardment will begin on 26th, and an attack on a 30-mile front will follow on the first of July.

  Some of the French newspapers, notably La Victoire, write a good deal about the impending British offensive, in which at last the great British Army, the work of Kitchener, will make a decisive attack and show what it can do.

  On 26 June,

  Reports of the German military attaché at Madrid and an agent agree that the enemy offensive will begin on 1st July.

  On 27 June,

  North of the Somme 14 captive balloons have been counted, corresponding to the 14 British divisions in line there. In the morning the British guns ceased. Will the British, recognising their lack of skill, yield precedence to the French?

  On the night of Thursday, 29 June, the weather cleared, and for miles up and down the Valley of the Ancre thousands of little fires burned in the darkness, below the sight of the Germans on the high ground above. From far and near came the sound of singing under the stars. Before one of the fires Phillip sat beside Sergeant Jones, dreamy with flames, his spirit happy with these men who looked to him for almost everything. He thought—as was true—that they were proud of their “Old Sticks”, because he was the only officer in the battalion who had been in an attack before: he would know what to do, and they would follow him anywhere, Sergeant Jones had told him.

  The fires died down, the stars moved westwards, water-birds and frogs called and croaked in the marshes; and under a shimmer of gunfire the men crept into their bivvies and slept their last sleep before the battle.

  *

  In the morning the sun shone into the valley. Flying was again possible, though at times low cloud dragged across the wide and gently swelling downland. The bombardment continued, though not so intensely, as supplies of shell, owing to the postponement by two extra days, were limited. Early that morning the Germans stood to in their trenches, and fired their machine-guns, while their artillery put down a barrage in no-man’s-land. This was soon known among the waiting troops: faces at times were serious.

  Phillip wrote two letters to his parents; one to be sent off—“good luck to Father’s allotment, tell him not to trench too deep, or he may find himself in Australia, after all”—the other to be posted if he were killed, thanking them both for a very happy life, and concluding that they must not worry when they heard that he had come to the deep, deep sleep.

  *

  “Company to parade in battle order at ten o’clock, sir!”

  Now the period of suspense was over. For Captain Bason and his company officers it had meant much work, in detailing and instructing ration-and water-parties (all water in 2-gallon petrol tins); in checking equipment, examining maps, instructing N.C.O.’s. signallers and runners, for each man had his detailed instructions for the assault. The times of the artillery lifts had, together with the signals by Very light and rocket for the gunners, the code words of companies and neighbouring units to be transmitted by visual signalling lamps, by flags, discs, shutters, fans, pigeons, ground-sheet-patterns for the R.F.C. contact patrol aeroplanes—all these had been learned by heart, for nothing must be written down, in case of capture.

  Months of training, lecture, rehearsal; of working parties under the Engineers for the digging, sand-bagging and roofing over of pits for guns, scores of guns, hundreds of guns, in orchards, woods, and on the open hillside; fatigue parties unloading shells and mortar bombs at hidden dumps; carrying parties humping up barbed wire, trench ladders, wire-netting to be laid over assembly trenches and covered with grass—all was done with now, as in the last night of June the company paraded silently, while the croaking of frogs in the wide marshes of the Ancre became insistent.

  Chapter 18

  THE CAKE-WALK

  In the courtyard of the farm he shook hands with Cox left in reserve, called his platoon to attention, and marched off along the road leading to Albert, followed, at 100-yard intervals, by the three other platoons of Captain Bason’s company. Each platoon pulled two ropes hooked to a little two-wheeled hand-cart in which were the Lewis guns and drum buckets.

  He carried a rifle, and wore the same makeshift leather equipment, in lieu of khaki webbing, as the men. Like them, he was in fighting order: bayonet in scabbard, entrenching tool, water bottle, steel helmet, rolled groundsheet and haversack in place of pack on back.

  In his haversack were towel, soap, shaving kit, message book, spare socks. In the mess-tin, covered by khaki cloth, was the “unconsumed portion of the day’s ration”, with two cheese rations, hard wheaten biscuits, tin of bully beef, and a selection of small pieces of cake, chocolate, lozenges of meat extract, and a tin of café-au-lait. The rest of his mother’s parcels he had had to leave behind—feeling that he was abandoning her with them.

  In his left breast pocket was a small khaki Bible, covering the heart, gift of the Church Army hut at Querrieu. Round his neck hung, on a leather boot-lace, a small papier-maché identity disc, with his name, rank, and regiment, and religion, C. of E., for burial purposes. On the bootlace hung the ebony and silver crucifix his mother had given him in 1914.

  The regimental device was stencilled in white on the front of his helmet, while on the left side the divisional colours were painted. These were repeated in a small rectangle of two-coloured cloth, sewn on the back of his tunic, centrally below the collar. A white riband on his left shoulder strap indicated his company. Thus docketed and tagged, he was, as Bason said, all ready for the Summer Sales.

  Like the men, he carried two gas helmets and a pair of tear-gas goggles, field dressing, and iodine capsule. In addition, together with other company officers, and N.C.O.’s, he carried four flares.

  The flares were to be burned in answer to long blasts on the klaxon horns of R.F.C. contact patrols, which meant, Where are you?

  *

  The night of 30 June 1916 was fine in the valley of the Ancre, and fairly quiet. Cries of water-fowl came through the darkness as the column frequently halted in the traffic congestion.

  The last hues of sunset were congealed upon the north-west rim of the earth above which arose a steely haze of light. Phillip wondered, as he leaned on his rifle, if this was the glow of the midnight sun, the distant rays in space rising millions of miles beyond the horizon of the battlefield. How small it must all seem to the sun, which had looked upon so much life and death on the planet. Everything was vast to one human brain, but to the sun, how small. A few miles farther on—across the slag-heaps of Loos—onwards to Flanders—over the Channel—beyond the South Downs and the North Downs—even upon London Bridge—thousands of human eyes were seeing a different sunset, each pair of eyes with different sets of thoughts. So there was seldom ever complete agreement. It was a terrifying thought, a revelation of man’s puny helplessness behind the great machines he made to ward off his fate, or to preserve it for awhile, with howitzers and high explosive. Where was God in the actual schem
e of things? His Son had failed to alter the scheme; He had died on the Cross, condemned to death by the makers of iron; and all God’s Mother could do was to stand below the Cross and grieve; and later, to be erected as a Virgin with the Babe in her arms, to ward off the Abyss—into which, originally, both had fallen. It was all right for Father Aloysius to talk; but it was a fairy story.

  He quivered with terror of death, waiting to enter the dead town of Albert, with its ruins blanched repeatedly by white stabs of field guns and bulging yellow fans of howitzers.

  They moved on slowly. They halted and shuffled on. At last they were over the old double-track railway-crossing and into the outskirts of the town. Many of the walls of the buildings were standing, but roofs gaped and window spaces showed blackly, in the ear-ringing white stabs of 18-pounders among the ruins.

  Other streams of traffic were converging upon the town, which was filling up everywhere with the rolling grind of wheels and the tramp of boots, shadowy with infantry columns side by side with files of led pack mules and horses pale-marked on their flanks. Each paleness was an oblong wooden box slung in a stirrup leather, holding two field-gun shells. Movement of foot, wheel, and hoof was continuous, and most strange without the sound of one human voice, a descent of the hosts of the dead into the Underworld.

  No palm of hand glowed with concealed fag, no jokes were made during the halts: all was earnest, and curiously unreal.

  The main roll of traffic went away to the right through the town, following the Rue de Bapaume. The platoon marched straight on, passing under the red-brick mass of high walls and shattered roofs above which the Golden Virgin leaned down from the campanile, high over the street, gleaming in every gun-flash.

  From the cellar of the last rubbled house came a glint of light. Above it was the dump, where the platoon had to take up three picks, twelve shovels, and six pairs of wire-cutters, to be given to those men already chosen to carry them; while others were given two sandbags and two Mills bombs each, with additional tools, bundles of sandbags, and barbed wire twisted on two-handled stakes. Two men were given a dixie of hot soup to carry, on a pole.