Over There by Arnold Bennett (best ereader for epub TXT) 📖

thick-set man, not tall, with small hands and feet, and finger-nails full of character. He has a short white moustache, and very light-coloured eyes set in a ruddy complexion. His chin is noticeable. He is not a bit dandiacal. He speaks quietly and grimly and reflectively. He is a preoccupied man. He walks a little to and fro, pausing between his short, sparse sentences. When he talks of the Germans he has a way of settling his head and neck with a slight defiant shake well between his shoulders. I have seen the gesture in experienced boxers and in men of business when openly or implicitly challenged. It is just as if he had said: "Wait a bit! I shall get even with that lot--and let no one imagine the contrary!" From the personality of the man there emanates all the time a pugnacious and fierce doggedness. After he has formally welcomed you into the meshes of his intimidating organisation, and made a few general observations, he says, in a new tone: "Well------," and you depart. And as you pass out of the building the thought in your mind is:

"I have seen him!" After the Commander-in-Chief there are two other outstanding and separately existing notabilities in connection with the General Staff. One is the Quartermaster-General, who superintends the supply of all material; and the other is the Adjutant- General, who superintends the supply of men. With the latter is that formidable instrument of authority, the Grand Provost Marshal, who superintends behaviour and has the power of life and death. Each of these has his Staff, and each is housed similarly to the Commander-in-Chief. Then each Army (for there is more than one army functioning as a distinct entity)--each Army has its Commander with his Staff. And each Corps of each Army has its Commander with his Staff. And each Division of each Corps of each Army has its Commander with his Staff. And each Brigade of each Division of each Corps of each Army has its Commander with his Staff; but though I met several Brigadier-Generals, I never saw one at his head-quarters with his Staff. I somehow could not penetrate lower than the entity of a Division. I lunched, had tea, and dined at the headquarters of various of these Staffs, with a General as host. They were all admirably housed, and their outward circumstances showed a marked similarity. The most memorable thing about them was their unending industry.

"You have a beautiful garden," I said to one General.

"Yes," he said. "I have never been into it."

He told me that he rose at six and went to bed at midnight.

As soon as coffee is over after dinner, and before cigars are over, the General will say:

"I don't wish to seem inhospitable, but------"

And a few minutes later you may see a large lighted limousine moving off into the night, bearing Staff officers to their offices for the evening seance of work which ends at twelve o'clock or thereabouts.

The complexity and volume of work which goes on at even a Divisional Headquarters, having dominion over about twenty thousand full-grown males, may be imagined; and that the bulk of such work is of a business nature, including much tiresome routine, is certain. Of the strictly military labours of Headquarters, that which most agreeably strikes the civilian is the photography and the map- work. I saw thousands of maps. I inspected thick files of maps all showing the same square of country under different military conditions at different dates. And I learnt that special maps are regularly circulated among all field officers.

The fitting-out and repairing sheds of the Royal Flying Corps were superb and complete constructions, at once practical and very elegant. I visited them in the midst of a storm. The equipment was prodigious; the output was prodigious; the organisation was scientific; and the staff was both congenial and impressive. When one sees these birdcages full of birds and comprehends the spirit of flight, one is less surprised at the unimaginable feats which are daily performed over there in the sky northwards and eastwards. I saw a man who flew over Ghent twice a week with the regularity of a train. He had never been seriously hit. These airmen have a curious physical advantage. The noise of their own engine, it is said, prevents them from hearing the explosions of the shrapnel aimed at them.

The British soldier in France and Flanders is not a self-supporting body.

He needs support, and a great deal of support. I once saw his day's rations set forth on a tray, and it seemed to me that I could not have consumed them in a week of good appetite. The round of meat is flanked by plenteous bacon, jam, cheese, and bread. In addition there are vegetables, tea, sugar, salt, and condiments, with occasional butter; and once a week come two ounces of tobacco and a box of matches for each ounce. But the formidable item is the meat. And then the British soldier wants more than food; he wants, for instance, fuel, letters, cleanliness; he wants clothing, and all the innumerable instruments and implements of war. He wants regularly, and all the time.

Hence you have to imagine wide steady streams of all manner of things converging upon Northern France not only from Britain but from round about the globe. The force of an imperative demand draws them powerfully in, night and day, as a magnet might. It is impossible to trace exactly either the direction or the separate constituents of these great streams of necessaries. But it is possible to catch them, or at any rate one of them, at the most interesting point of its course: the point at which the stream, made up of many converging streams, divides suddenly and becomes many streams again.

That point is the rail-head.

Now, a military rail-head is merely an ordinary average little railway station, with a spacious yard. There is nothing superficially romantic about it. It does not even mark the end of a line of railway. I have in mind one which served as the Head-quarters of a Divisional Supply Column. The organism served just one division--out of the very many divisions in France and Flanders. It was under the command of a Major. This Major, though of course in khaki and employing the same language and general code as a regimental Major, was not a bit like a regimental Major. He was no more like a regimental Major than I am myself. He had a different mentality, outlook, preoccupation. He was a man in business. He received orders--I use the word in the business sense--from the Brigades of the Division; and those orders, ever varying, had to be executed and delivered within thirty-six hours. Quite probably he had never seen a trench; I should be neither surprised nor pained to learn that he could only hit a haystack with a revolver by throwing the revolver at the haystack. His subordinates resembled him. Strategy, artillery- mathematics, the dash of infantry charges--these matters were not a bit in their line. Nevertheless, when you read in a despatch that during a prolonged action supplies went regularly up to the Front under heavy fire, you may guess that fortitude and courage are considerably in their line. These officers think about their arriving trains, and about emptying them in the shortest space of time; and they think about their motor-lorries and the condition thereof; and they pass their lives in checking lists and in giving receipts for things and taking receipts for things. Their honour may be in a receipt. And all this is the very basis of war.

My Major handled everything required for his division except water and ammunition. He would have a train full of multifarious provender, and another train full of miscellanies--from field-guns to field-kitchens--with letters from wives and sweethearts in between. And all these things came to him up the line of railway out of the sea simply because he asked for them and was ready to give a receipt for them. He was not concerned with the magic underlying their appearance at his little rail-head; he only cared about the train being on time, and the lorries being in first-class running order. He sprayed out in beneficent streams from his rail-head tons of stuff every day. Every day he sent out two hundred and eighty bags of postal matter to the men beyond. The polish on the metallic portions of his numerous motor-lorries was uncanny. You might lift a bonnet and see the bright parts of the engine glittering like the brass of a yacht. Dandyism of the Army Service Corps!

An important part of the organism of the rail-head is the Railway Construction Section Train. Lines may have to be doubled. The Railway Construction Section Train doubles them; it will make new railways at the rate of several miles a day; it is self-contained, being simultaneously a depot, a workshop, and a barracks.

Driving along a road you are liable to see rough signs nailed to trees, with such words on them as "Forage," "Groceries," "Meat," "Bread," etc. Wait a little, and you may watch the Divisional Supply at a further stage. A stream of motor-lorries--one of the streams sprayed out from the rail-head--will halt at those trees and unload, and the stuff which they unload will disappear like a dream and an illusion. One moment the meat and the bread and all the succulences are there by the roadside, each by its proper tree, and the next they are gone, spirited away to camps and billets and trenches. Proceed further, and you may have the luck to see the mutton which was frozen in New Zealand sizzling in an earth-oven in a field christened by the soldiers with some such name as Hampstead Heath. The roasted mutton is a very fine and a very appetising sight. But what quantities of it! And what an antique way of cooking!

As regards the non-edible supplies, the engineer's park will stir your imagination. You can discern every device in connection with warfare. (To describe them might be indiscreet--it would assuredly be too lengthy.) . . . Telephones such as certainly you have never seen! And helmets such as you have never seen! Indeed, everything that a soldier in full work can require, except ammunition.

The ammunition-train in process of being unloaded is a fearsome affair. You may see all conceivable ammunition, from rifle cartridges to a shell whose weight is liable to break through the floors of lorries, all on one train. And not merely ammunition, but a thousand pyrotechnical and other devices; and varied bombs. An officer unscrews a cap on a metal contraption, and throws it down, and it begins to fizz away in the most disconcerting manner. And you feel that all these shells, all these other devices, are simply straining to go off. They are like things secretly and terribly alive, waiting the tiny gesture which will set them free. Officers, handling destruction with the nonchalance of a woman handling a hat, may say what they like--the ammunition train is to my mind an unsafe neighbour. And the thought of all the sheer brain-power which has gone to the invention and perfecting of those propulsive and explosive machines causes you to wonder whether you yourself possess a brain at all.

You can find everything in the British lines except the British Army. The same is to be said of the French lines; but the in discoverability of the British Army is relatively much more striking, by reason of the greater richness and complexity of the British auxiliary services. You see soldiers--you see soldiers everywhere; but the immense majority of them are obviously engaged in attending to the material needs of other