“It’s too far forward,” said G. B. “However, if America wants to stay…” And he grinned.
We were not left long in peace. A big detonation in the Sucrerie ruins sent up a fountain of brick-dust, and then another shell pitched in front of us and covered us with mud.
I was absolutely done up; the sound of that first shell was like a knell in my ears. I had been dreading a renewal of the shelling. I felt that I could not stand it. The thought of the day that stretched ahead appalled me. As the shelling increased in volume, I lay in my funk-hole and quaked. It was only the knowledge that I was an officer and that the men looked to me for leadership that prevented me from turning and running—that and G. B.’s gaunt face. I was in the grip of two fears: a loathsome physical fear and the fear that G. B. should know it.
I have heard intellectuals sneer at physical courage as a brutal and often senseless quality, but that day, when I myself lacked it, I knew it for a magnificent thing, and I saw its wonderful power over other men. I have heard it said that one brave man may inspire a whole army with courage, and that day I knew it to be true.
The shelling was very heavy, heavier than anything we had yet experienced, Harding had his hands full attending to the casualties. G. B. crawled up beside me with a serious face. “This cannot go on, Baron,” he said. “We are losing too many men. Take a man with you and go back to Harding and see if there are any more of those old Bosche funk-holes in the dip behind the Sucrerie.”
I called my servant and we crawled back through the spouting rubble-heap of the Sucrerie and down into the little dip beyond. Here we found some old German shelters dug into the far bank. They faced the wrong way, but they offered some protection. I returned to G. B. and reported.
“You and Gurney take your platoons back,” he said, “and get them under cover. I will leave a man to keep touch, and you must watch the shelling carefully. At the first sign of its slackening you must bring up your men hell for leather.”
Gurney and I got our men back into the shelters, though it was warm work getting there. We did not trust a man to watch; Gurney and I took it in turns to do so, for there was G. B. up there with only one depleted platoon.
At the first sign of slackening in the shelling, we gave the alarm and dashed out; and as we stumbled through the hummocks of the Sucrerie we heard a burst of rapid fire in front and a minute later saw the now familiar line of grey figures advancing. We flung ourselves down and let them have it.
I have no very clear idea of what followed. I saw grey figures behind me; I saw some of our men going back; I could not see G. B. And then we were back on the far side of the dip behind the Sucrerie firing mechanically, and I remember thinking that it was all over, that we could do no more, that they were through us. And then I realized that the grey figures were no longer advancing and that the opposite slope was bare of movement. And I saw G. B. again.
But this was only a respite: they would come on again and we could hold them no longer.
G. B. was at my side, saying, “This won’t do, Baron. We can’t see a damned thing from here. We must push them back again.”
I stared at him in amazement. We were done to the wide; we could hardly stand upon our feet. Their next drive must swamp us. It was obvious. And here was G. B. talking of attacking I thought he must be joking, but his face was serious.
“Get the men together,” he said.
“We have no artillery support,” I stammered.
“We shall not want it,” he answered. “We have fought them to a standstill, but they will have another try in a minute or two. They are getting ready for it now. We will give them ten rounds rapid and then go in with the bayonet. They will run like hares; you’ll see.”
I told the men that we were going to counter-attack. I saw amazement on their faces; their thoughts were the same as mine had been. “Captain Bretherton says that we shall go through them like sheep,” I said.
They cheered up at that. They were saying to themselves that if G. B. said it was all right, it was all right.
The Bosche came on again in a minute or two as G. B. had foretold. We met them with a terrific burst of rapid fire. The attacking line wavered, struggled on half-heartedly, and stopped; and then G. B. let out a great yell, and we rose to our feet and went at them with the bayonet. I was yelling myself, and my voice sounded hoarse and cracked.
And then we were back in our old position in front of the Sucrerie. I lay there panting on the ground, and I realized that Harding was beside me.
“A Company is some company,” he shouted in my ear.
I nodded. I cared for nothing now. I knew that I should go on like an automaton. If G. B. said get up, I should get up; and if he had told me to stand on my head, I believe I should have done so.
VIII
Time passed slowly, and I found myself dreading the coming of night. They would pound us hard, I felt, and then attack. For thirty hours we had been pounded and had repulsed attacks; we had had no rest and no sleep, and the casualty list was mounting up and up. Would we never be relieved? Were we to stay here till the last man fell and the grey tide swept over us?
Just before dusk, a plane droned overhead, flying low and attracting a fusillade of rifle and machine-gun fire from the enemy. It sounded our call on its klaxon horn and an object like a truncheon, tied to a handkerchief dropped from it and landed somewhere in the Sucrerie.
The message was brought to G. B. where he lay close beside me. He read it and turned to me. “We are to go back,” he said with some bitterness. “No relief. They are abandoning this bit; just like them after we have done our damnedest to hold it.”
“We are well out of this,” said Gurney to me when he heard the news. “And to think that the poor old infantry do this sort thing every day. I take my hat off to them every time.”
“Every time,” I agreed heartily.
Gurney’s and Dodd’s platoons went first. Then it was my turn. My sergeant led the way, and I prepared to bring up the rear. I reported to G. B. when every man had gone, and he answered, “Right-oh. Get along.”
I knew it was useless to argue with him, and I followed my men; but I waited on the fringe of the Sucrerie ruins, and I was very glad when he joined me.
It was now quite dark, and we were able to get to our feet and flounder through the mud. At the end of some twenty minutes, we found ourselves in a moderately good trench where men with cigarettes behind their ears and ground-sheets over their shoulders sat at the entrance to dug-outs and played housy-housy; and these familiar sights of trench life now seemed to us as civilized as a Mayfair drawing-room. And then we came out upon a road and fell into column of route. Ahead, a line of tall, shivered trees stood outlined against the night sky, and every now and then we were blinded by the flash of some unseen gun, and our ears were smitten by its reverberating bang. Behind us, the Verey lights rose and fell, the rockets curved against the sky, and the steady drum-fire went on.
We were a battered, ragged, depleted little body of scarecrows that trudged painfully along that road. Our destination was our old transport lines in that snug little valley where now was built the corps prisoner-of-war cage, presided over by Hubbard and some of B Company. It was a long, long trail for us, done up as we were, and the moon had risen long before we shuffled over the crest of the hill that led to our little valley. My invaluable Corporal Pepper, however, was game to the end; he produced a mouth-organ and played us—rather shakily, it is true—selections from the latest London revues. I marched—shuffled perhaps is the word—at the rear of the column, and I can see it now: the dark, slowly moving mass of men with the rifles standing up an inch of two above their heads and the moonlight glinting on their steel hats.
The Company Quartermaster-Sergeant knew of our coming and was at the entrance of the little valley to meet us, and so were Hubbard and a good number of B Company. When he saw them, G. B. turned his head and cried, “Pull yourselves together, A Company.”
Stout young Pepper struck up “Keep the home f
ires burning,” the drooping backs straightened, the nodding heads stiffened, the shuffling feet straightened out and began to beat in rhythm on the road, and to the melancholy wail of the mouth-organ we marched into camp, I declare, with something very nearly approaching a swagger.
CHAPTER X
I
The Major came in as we sat at breakfast in our Stevenson hut.
“Well played, A Company,” he said, “Well done, G. B. The Corps Commander is very pleased with your effort, and, between ourselves, he is putting you in for the M.C.”
I expected that G. B. would be as pleased to hear this as I was, but he answered rather discourteously, I thought.
“Headquarters give decorations as lightly as they give up bits of the line that have cost lives to take.”
The Major popped a lump of sugar into his mouth and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you have done your job, G. B.; yours not to reason why.”
G. B.’s leave was long overdue, but with the Somme battle dragging on there was little or no leave going. The Major rang up one morning, however, to say that H.Q. had a vacancy and that G. B. could go that day. He packed up then and there and went, and I was left temporarily in command of the company.
We were enjoying our rest in the little valley. I shared a tent with G. B., and now that he was away I had it to myself. It was perched on the slope above the valley, and from it I looked across the rolling Somme country to the scarred hillsides whereon the battle still raged; and at night the horizon, framed in the pyramid tent flaps, often resembled a Crystal Palace firework display. The valley itself was full of movement, troops coming and going, and an occasional high-velocity shell to liven things up. Below me was the corps prisoner-of-war cage presided over by Hubbard and some of B Company, and periodically a long grey column of prisoners wound its way out of the valley, shepherded by our friends the Lancers looking very warlike with their steel helmets and drawn swords and spare bandolier round their horses’ glossy necks.
I wrote a long letter to Helen describing as much of it as I could, for the censorship was more stringent in those eventful days. When I had finished the letter I found that I had no envelope, and I rummaged in G. B.’s kit on the chance that he might have some. I found a whole packet and a few odd ones already stamped with the battalion censor stamp. I was rather amused at this. It was strictly against orders, of course, to stamp an envelope with the censor stamp before the letter was written, but we had sometimes done so in Melford’s day to avoid the nuisance of taking the letter to the orderly-room. I put Helen’s letter in one of the stamped envelopes, scrawled my name across the corner, and sent it off to the divisional post office at the far end of the valley.
On the following day I met Pagan standing by the Zoo, as we called the corps cage.
“Hast heard the news?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied promptly. “The old squire lies foully murdered!”
“And out in the snow with no roof to his mouth,” grinned Pagan. “But seriously, have you heard the news?”
“Rather,” I answered lightly. “The Esquimos have joined the Allies, and President Wilson has written another note to Germany.”
“Funny ass!” he said. “B.F. cubed. But there are alarums and excursions going on at Battalion Headquarters.”
“What about?” I asked, becoming interested at last.
“Headquarters are re-censoring a lot of letters now, you know.”
“Well?”
“They have opened one containing a map of this front—positions and what not marked on it.”
“Someone’s a B.F. then, and for it. Who was it?”
“They don’t know. There was no letter; only the map.”
“But what has that got to do with us? Why is the Major perturbed about it?”
“Because,” he said and paused oratorically, “because it has our censor stamp on it.”
I whistled. “The battalion censor stamp?”
He nodded.
“Well, it can’t be anyone in A or B Companies,” I said, and then stopped short.
“No, because we get our letters stamped by the nearest unit and don’t use the battalion stamp,” he finished for me.
“Therefore it must be one of C Company,” I put in hurriedly.
“But pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,” he quoted smilingly. “Battalion Headquarters and C Company send their letters through the Corps post-office, and this particular letter happens to have been opened at the divisional office here.”
“By Jove!” I exclaimed. “The one we send ours to.”
“And ours also,” added Pagan. “But there is more to come, as the story-books say; this mysterious missive—rather good that—contained a map, and that map happens to be the one Melford lost from the old Company.”
“Sacred pigs!” I exclaimed; and then was silent for a moment. “You say that there was no letter with it?”
“No; therefore the charge lies against a person or persons unknown, as the lawyers say.”
“But how about the officer who censored it? His name should have been in the corner of the envelope.”
“It was ‘A. Nemo’! Commands Z Company, perhaps!”
“Um! Sort of nom-de-plume, eh!”
“Nom-de-crayon—it was written in pencil. Evidently the fellow is a profound Latin scholar and not untouched by a sense of humour.”
“How about the handwriting?” I suggested.
“Written with an entrenching tool and with the left hand, I should say,” he replied.
“And the address?”
“Miss Smith, care of some little post-office at Hammersmith.”
“Um! I shouldn’t wonder if there were two or three Miss Smiths in Hammersmith,” I commented.
“Exactly. He has covered up his tracks pretty well.”
“But why on earth all this heavy plot stuff?” I exclaimed. “That wretched map is worthless now; every unit in France has been moved since it was made.”
“Ah! that’s the question, as laddie Hamlet said. My own theory is that we are harbouring a lunatic in our gentle bosoms—that or some bright lad who has been to the movies and found the excitement too much for him.”
“That’s rot, of course,” I said. “But I’m dashed if I can see any other explanation. Some idiot steals a map—a secret map—keeps it till it is no good, and then risks cashiering by sending it to Miss Smith of Hammersmith! And the same perfect idiot sent that photograph to the papers, I suppose.”
“Oh, somebody is potty all right,” agreed Pagan. “You know, Baron, I always had a sneaking belief that it was Groucher that did this map and photograph business; but this proves it can’t have been him.”
“It’s a good thing we are under corps and not under the old division, anyway,” I growled. “If this had cropped up with them after the other business, there would have been hell to pay—and may be still as far as I know.”
Pagan shook his head. “They won’t stop the war for it,” he said. “It’s only a question of discipline; the map is worthless—and they have got their hands pretty full with this little battle. They will pull the Major’s hair, and he will strafe the battalion, and that is all. We shall have him up here presently asking questions; you’ll see. And now, having given you all the latest latrine rumours, for which I generously make no charge, I must get on with the war. B Company calleth.”
II
On the following day G. B. returned from leave; and the C.O. came up to see us, as Pagan had prophesied. The officers of A and B Companies assembled under the tarpaulin that served B Company as a mess, and the Major began his strafe.
He told us that a divisional headquarters had opened a letter stamped with the battalion censor stamp and containing a map. He made no reference to the previous history of that map, for he knew nothing of it, and none of us felt called upon to enlighten him. He pointed out that a breach of the censorship regulations was a grave offence; that the lives of thousands of men might be involved; and that by failing i
n his duties as censor, an officer was as disloyal to his country as if he had deserted to the enemy. The sending of a map of that nature through the post was a flagrant crime, and the sender, whoever he might be, by signing a false name upon the envelope, showed that he realized the seriousness of what he was doing.
“Now, I am not suggesting that any of you sent that map,” continued the C.O. “No one with a spark of patriotism or decency could do a thing like that. We all bear the King’s commission—officers and gentlemen, as the phrase goes. The man who sent that map is certainly not a gentleman, and I do not believe that he was an officer—not one of mine at any rate.
“I prefer to think that one of the men—one of the new drafts—sent it. Not in the usual way of course; otherwise the letter would have gone to his platoon officer or company commander for censorship. I believe that the letter went direct from the sender to the post-office and arrived there already stamped with the censor stamp and signed with that false name.
“But the question then arises as to how the letter became stamped with the battalion censor stamp. The men have not access to it. I suggest that some man got hold of an empty envelope already stamped, scrawled that name in the corner, and so avoided the usual censorship. Therefore, what I want to ask you is this: Have any of you ever put the battalion censor stamp on a blank envelope or kept such envelopes in your kit? For if you have, you see it would be quite possible for someone else to get hold of one. Now I am going to put that question to each of you separately.”
While the question was being put, I had my eyes on G. B.’s face, and when it came to his turn and he answered “No,” our eyes met. It was only for a moment that they met, but something in my glance must have told him that I knew of those envelopes in his kit for I was instantly aware that he knew that I knew.
It was some time later, when we were alone together in our tent, that he looked up from the returns he was signing and said, “So you knew about those envelopes in my kit!”
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