''Contemptible'' by - (ebooks online reader .TXT) 📖

greater violence southwards. And now, before the campaign was a month old, the enemy were within an ace of the most complete victory of modern times. Many men will never forget that night—men on either side with high commands.

How the Kaiser must have chuckled when the French Cabinet left for Bordeaux! Bombastic phrases were perchance chasing themselves through his perverted mind. How fine he would look at Versailles, strutting about the Hall of Victories. He would sleep in the bed of the "Grand Monarque"—and in Les Invalides how he would smile at the tomb of Napoleon! Perhaps his statesmen were that very night drafting the terms of peace that a crushed adversary would be only too thankful to accept. His day had come at last! Henceforward how he would laugh at Democracy and Socialism. He would show them that he was master. The best weapon in all the world was sudden, bloody war. He would show his people that he was their Master, their Salvation, their War Lord. He was the greatest man in history, so he thought that night.

There may come a time when he will realise that, after all, he was only the most contemptible and pitiable. But that is by the way.

His Generals could not have been so sure. They must have seen the exhaustion of their men. Von Kluck must have already felt the weight of the army, rushed out of Paris by General Galliéni, that threatened to envelop his right flank. Von Heeringen must have realised that the offensive was being wrenched from his grasp. And the Crown Prince was throwing himself in vain upon the forts of Verdun and Nancy.

That night, too, somewhere behind the French lines, a man of very different stamp from the Kaiser was putting the final touches to the preparations of the greatest counter-attack in History. He knew that the enemy had literally overstepped his lines of communications, was exhausted, and nervous of failure so far from his bases. He knew that as long as de Castelnau clung on to the heights around Verdun, his centre and left were safely hinged upon a fortress under cover of which he could launch his counter-offensive with all the weight of his now completely mobilised reinforcements. Moreover, the army that had hurried pell-mell from Paris in taxicabs, in carts, in any form of conveyance that the authorities could lay hands upon, was now completely established on the left of the British, and if Von Kluck, lured on by the prize of Paris, pushed on, he would be outnumbered on his front and very seriously menaced on his right, and disaster would be certain.

Not that the Subaltern knew or cared much for these things. He and his men were past caring. Continuous retreat had first evoked surprise, then resentment, then, as fatigue began to grip them like a vice, a kind of dull apathy. He felt he would not have cared whatever happened. The finer emotions of sorrow or hope or happiness were drugged to insensibility. With the exception of odd moments when, absolutely causelessly, wild anger and ungovernable rage took possession of him and seemed to make his blood boil and seethe, he seemed to be degenerating into the state of mind commonly attributed to the dumb beasts of the field—indifferent to everything in the wide world except food and sleep.

That night a draft commanded by one Subaltern arrived to fill up the gaps.

The next day the retreat continued. The men's nerves were tried to breaking-point, and a little detail, small and of no consequence in itself, opened the lock, as it were, to a perfect river of growing anger and discontent.

This was how it happened. The Colonel had repeated the previous night the order about looting, and the men were under the impression that if any of them took so much as a green apple he would be liable to "death or some such less punishment as the Act shall provide." They talk about it and grumble, and then suddenly, without any warning except a clucking and scratching, the Mess Sergeant is seen by the greater part of the Battalion to issue triumphantly from a farm gate with two or three fat hens under his arms. Smiling broadly, totally ignorant of the enormity of his conduct, he deposits his load in the mess-cart drawn up to receive the loot!

The men did not let the opportunity slip by without giving vent to a lot of criticism.

The Subaltern's ears tingled at the remarks that he heard. Never in his life had he felt so ridiculous.

Luckily, another similar incident relieved the situation, shortly afterwards. During a few minutes' halt, a cow near the road stood gazing, with that apathetic interest peculiar to cows, at the thirsty men. It was not for nothing, as the French say, that one of the reservists had been a farm hand. He went up to the cow, unfastening his empty water-bottle as he went, and calmly leant down and began to milk the neglected animal until his bottle was full. It was not in itself a funny proceeding, but there was something about the calmness of both the cow and the man, and something about the queerness of the occasion, that appealed to the sense of humour of the dourest old Puritan of them all. They laughed, they roared, they shouted, in a way that reminded the Subaltern of the last "soccer" season.

The noise must have mystified the pursuing Uhlans not a little.

But the laugh did not last long on their lips. Directly afterwards they swung into a road already occupied by a train of refugees. After the sight of a good strong man struck down in his strength, this, perhaps, was the saddest sight of the whole war. How miserable they were, these helpless, hopeless people, trailing sadly along the road, the majority with all they had saved from the wreckage of their homes tied in a sheet, and carried on their backs. Some were leading a cow, others riding a horse, a few were in oxen-driven wagons. They looked as if they had lost faith in everything, even in God. They had the air of people calmly trying to realise the magnitude of the calamity which had befallen them, and failing.

Here and there the Subaltern thought he saw a gleam of reproach in their faces. It hurt him not a little. Only a few days ago the British had been advancing, as they thought, to certain victory. All had been sunshine, or at any rate hope. How the villagers had shouted and cheered them! How the women had wept with sheer joy, and shy young girls had thrust flowers into their buttonholes! What heroes they had felt swinging forward to meet the enemy, to defend the homes of their friends and Allies, and avenge their wrongs!

The rôle had been melodramatic, superb! But here they were, skirting the very gates of Paris, apparently fleeing before the enemy, and this without having made any very determined effort at resistance. Poor protectors they must have looked! Those simple peasants would not understand the efficacy, the necessity even, of running away "to live and fight another day," with a greater chance of success.

The Subaltern often used to wonder what the poor wretches thought of troops, which, though in possession of arms and ammunition, still retreated—always retreated. They could not understand.

The march came to an end about one o'clock. A halt of half-an-hour for dinner was ordered in the shade of some huge trees in a park. The mess-cart and Cookers arrived, and a meal was soon in progress. The Regimental Officer of what is now referred to as the "Old Army" was perhaps the best-mannered man one could possibly meet. His training in the Mess made him so. He was the sort of man who would not have done anything which so much as even suggested rudeness or greed. He was as scrupulous of his Mess Rules as a Roman Catholic Priest is of his conduct at High Mass. To the newly-joined Subaltern, Guest Night conveyed the holy impression of a religious rite. But here was a comic demonstration of the fact that the strictest training is only, after all, a veneer. Two Senior Officers were actually squabbling about a quarter-pound tin of marmalade! The Subaltern could not help smiling. The incident merely showed how raw and jagged the Great Retreat had left the nerves of those who survived it.

An hour's halt passed only too soon, and its later moments were made uneasy by the instinctive aversion which every one felt for the sound of the whistles that would mark the end of it. The Battalion, however, had no sooner swung into the road, than the Colonel, who had been reading a message with an expression of surprise, held up his hand to signal the halt. The moment was historic. Although none knew, it was the end of the Great Retreat.

CHAPTER XVI THE TURN OF THE TIDE

The next day the Battalion linked up with the Brigade, and instead of proceeding in the usual direction—southwards—they turned to the north.

There was a great deal of subdued excitement. They were not going to move off for a precious hour or so, and, as "battle seemed imminent," the Subaltern did his best to make up the "deficiencies" in his equipment.

Another Subaltern lay stricken with dysentery in one of the regimental wagons, and he "borrowed" his revolver and ammunition. Apart from the fact that the poor fellow was in too great pain to dispute the robbery, he declared with embellishments that he never wanted to see the —— thing again. "Take it, and be —— to it!" he said.

Curiously enough, the Subaltern was able to stick to the loan through all the troubles that followed, and was eventually able to return it to its owner, met casually in the London Hippodrome, months later.

Soon afterwards, when they were marching through a village called Chaumes, he learnt that in the forthcoming battle they were to be in General Reserve, and this relieved the nervous tension for the moment. There was a feeling that a great chance of distinguished service was lost, but as the General Reserves are usually flung into the fight towards its concluding stages, he did not worry on that score.

The four Regiments of the Brigade were massed in very close formation in a large orchard, ready to move at a moment's notice. There they lay all day, sleeping with their rifles in their hands, or lying flat on their backs gazing at the intense blue of the sky overhead.

The heat, although they were in the first week in September, was greater than ever. The blue atmosphere seemed to quiver with the shock of guns.

General Headquarters had been established in a house near by, a middle-class, flamboyant, jerry-built affair. How its owner would have gasped if he could have seen the Field-Marshal conducting the British share of the great battle in his immodest "salle à manger!"

Aeroplanes were continually ascending from and descending to a ploughed field adjacent to the orchard. Motors were ceaselessly dashing up and down. Assuredly they were near to the heart of things.

That afternoon some one procured a page of the Daily Mirror, which printed the first casualty list of the war. Perhaps you can remember reading it. One was not used to the sensation. One felt that "it brought things home to one." Not that this was by any means necessary at that time and place. Still it was very depressing to think that in God's beautiful sunlight, brave, strong men were being maimed and laid low for ever. One had a vague feeling that it was blasphemous, and ought to be stopped.

It was not until dusk that a start was made, and the Regiment halted again about a mile further on and settled down for the night in a stubble field opposite a very imposing château.

Evidently the fight had gone well, for they passed at least two lines of