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

hasty trenches quite deserted.

The Germans had at last been driven back!

Any joy that this discovery might have occasioned was sobered and tempered by the sight of small bodies of men bent double over their work in the purple twilight. They were burying-parties. Two twigs tied together and stuck in the brown mounds of earth was all the evidence there was of each little tragedy. During the retreat the Subaltern had naturally had little opportunity to realise this most pitiable side of war, the cold Aftermath of Battle.

I will tell you of the inglorious way in which one man spent this momentous day, the wonderful hours in which the tide turned, and a Continent was saved—in chasing chickens! He was the Mess Sergeant, and it was his duty. Anyway, the Mess dined gloriously off the chickens he caught, and as a couple of hayricks had been dismantled and distributed, everybody spent a tolerably comfortable night.

CHAPTER XVII THE ADVANCE BEGINS

Although they stood to arms at the first flush of daylight on the following day, they did not march off until nearly eleven o'clock. The men were moved into the leafy grounds of the château to keep them out of the sun, and beyond the observation of hostile aircraft.

The regimental butchers slew one or two sheep during the wait; but the meat subsequently proved to be abominably tough, and the fat collected to oil the bolts of the men's rifles only served to make them stiffer than ever.

The Subaltern had entertained fond hopes that owing to his recent unusually long hours of sleep he would not be attacked by the same nauseating sensations of fatigue; but his hopes were vain. The sleep seemed to have made things worse. A little rest had developed an overwhelming desire for more, and he felt worse than ever.

He longed as he had never longed before for long cool drinks and clean white sheets. He imagined himself at home. What would he do? He pictured himself in the bathroom eagerly peeling off his puttees as the water splashed into the pale blue bath. How he would wallow in it! He could feel how the water would caress his body, tepid and soothing.

On the table in the dining-room, green and cool with its view of the sombre pine wood, stood a long cold drink of what? Cider, perhaps, or lime-juice and soda, something you could drink and drink and drink. Last of all—culminating pleasure of heaven—his red bedroom, with the sheets ready turned down for him, soft and white and alluring. That would have been heaven.

But this heaven of his was very far away from the hard dusty road and the eternal poplars! With a painful jolt his thoughts would return to the realities of life; he would feel dazed and annoyed, and in his heart of hearts he wanted to cry.

Sir Archibald Murray passed in a car, holding an animated conversation with a much-beribboned and distinguished-looking French General. He looked very pleased with himself, as well he might, for the greatest work of his career had begun the day before with astounding success.

The Subaltern must have felt very tired and dissatisfied that afternoon. Having exhausted the painful thoughts of home, he began to tell himself what an awful life Active Service was. It never occurred to him to be thankful that a youth so young should have the luck to play his part in such tremendous events. He did not at the time realise that there were thousands of adventurous souls at home who would have given an arm to have been where he had been.

He did not realise that in after days the memory of every weary hour of trudging, of every bullet that had hummed by, and of every shell that had burst, would be a joy for ever. The thought had never struck any of them, unsentimental souls!

At this point his memory confessedly breaks down. He remembers perfectly a certain "ten minutes' halt" spent in the shade of a sheaf of corn. He remembers plunging into a pine forest; but thenceforward there is a blank. His memory snaps. He cannot recollect passing through that wood, much less passing out of it. A link in the chain of his memory must have snapped.

When next he recollects anything clearly it may have been that night, the next night, or the night after that. Anyway, it was very dark, and the Battalion was eventually halted in an open field. Somehow or other, straw was procured for the rest, but his own Platoon was sent forward to hold an outpost position along the banks of a small stream.

Although in the daytime the sun shone with undiminished fervour, the nights were getting certainly far more chilly than they had been in August. But when one has to get up at daybreak, having never had more than four hours sleep, one does not notice it much.

During the night a fresh draft arrived.

The next morning they very soon encountered an entirely new sight, a French village hastily evacuated by the enemy. At least half of the houses had been broken into, and all the shops and inns. The Germans had dragged chairs and tables to the roadside, and they must have been sitting there drinking and smoking when the news of the British advance, and orders to retire had come upon them. Everything seemed to show that the enemy had left at the shortest notice. He had not had time to perpetrate any of his well-known barbarities on the few inhabitants who had remained in their houses, and no attempt had apparently been made even to burn the village!

A little further on, the abstemious Hun had obviously made a halt. The litter of bottles was appalling. There was a perfect wall of them for about a quarter of a mile. The proportion of bottles to the number of men estimated to occupy four hundred yards (1000) was alarming. There must have been enough drink to upset a British Army Corps. Most certainly the Germans in front must have been out of hand, and very drunk. The men were vastly amused.

The day dragged on very wearily, and no deployment was made. Apparently the enemy had taken about as much as he could comfortably endure on the previous two days. He was not waiting to be pushed back; he was speeding north-east as fast as his legs could carry him.

In the afternoon a heavy shower rather damped the excitement evoked by the enemy's dramatic failure to hold his own. Sounds of a fierce encounter were heard in front, and the Brigade was hurried down a steep and wooded decline to the scene of action. They arrived too late to share in the actual infliction of defeat upon the enemy, but they were immediately sent in pursuit, as the other Brigade was very tired and rather shaken.

A man told the Subaltern that some unfortunate company, marching in fours up a village street, had been fired upon by a machine-gun controlled by a few men left behind by the enemy to inflict the greatest possible damage before discovery and capture. They had done their work well, for, concealed in the roof of a house, they had swept the street at point-blank range and literally mown down a whole company before they had been located, and "put out of action." Still they must have been brave men, for the personal result of such an exploit is certain death.

The state of that street had better not be described. The Aftermath of Battle! It is depressing, cold and passionless, dirty and bloody; the electricity of life has gone from the air, and the wine of life-blood is spilt, it seems, so needlessly upon the ground. Perhaps the spirits of the dead linger over it. Their presence is instinctively felt. As, overpowered with the sorrow of it, you pass by, the thought steals into your mind, "When will my turn come?" This Aftermath of Battle is assuredly the most awful thing in war.

As soon as the men began to scale the steep incline opposite, they saw that the costs had not been paid by the British alone. Figures, covered in most cases by their own grey overcoats, lay out upon the ground. Leaning up against a wall a body was still lolling. It was a sight that no one who saw it will ever forget. There was no head; it had been shorn oft as cleanly as if the man had been guillotined. An unburst shell had probably swept the man's head from his shoulders as he looked over the wall, and the aimless-looking trunk was still leaning against the wall as if "waiting for further orders."

The pursuit was continued until it was quite dark. The Companies wheeled into the fields, and slept where they stood. The Colonel delivered a short address, which showed that all was not as well as it looked. But what really did worry them was lack of straw. The Colonel was of the opinion that the enemy would take his stand on the opposite bank of the Marne, which, he told them, was only half a mile ahead. To-morrow there would be a fight, the like of which neither they nor any one else had seen before.

They were disturbed that night, not indeed by the fear of what to-morrow might hold in store, but by a small stampede of escaped horses, who careered madly over the sleeping lines, injuring one man very severely.

CHAPTER XVIII THE CROSSING OF THE MARNE

As soon as dawn broke—a dawn exceptionally cold and cheerless—the cavalry pushed forward to effect some sort of reconnaissance. Meanwhile the infantry had nothing better to do than to conceal themselves behind the copses that covered the slope, and await their turn. In about an hour's time they were deployed and moved cautiously forward to the attack, the Batteries being already placed in readiness for the beginning of the "show."

No army in the world can execute this movement as scientifically or as safely as the British Army. Memories of South Africa and Indian frontier fights have left us undoubtedly the finest scouting army in Europe. We were, of course, hopelessly outmatched in artillery and numbers. But artillery being equal, there was not a Brigade in any army in the world that could have held its own against a British Brigade. That, however, is by the way.

They pressed steadily forward, and, having breasted the slope, the valley of the Marne burst suddenly upon their view. It was at least three miles in breadth, and the opposite heights were screened by woods. A small town marked the bridge. The country was "open"—painfully open; there was not an atom of real cover between them and the heights opposite.

But no shells came whistling towards them. No doubt the enemy was holding his fire until they were within closer range. (Not a pleasant thought, this, by any means.) But no, they went on scrambling down the deep slope, and still no sound of firing disturbed the morning silence. As each moment fled by the Subaltern thought to himself, "Not yet! Well, the next minute will bring things about our heads!" But the next minute kept on passing as uneventfully as its predecessors.

At last they reached the bridge and found it absolutely undamaged. Even then the Subaltern could not repress the thought that all this was only a trick, and that they were being lured on to destruction. But his sanguinary forebodings were not justified, and the opposite heights were scaled without opposition.

He afterwards learnt, that, however much the Germans might have wanted to hold this magnificent line, the strategical situation had become so pressing that on this sector nothing could save them from disaster except a complete and hurried retreat. They were all but outflanked on their right, which was already very seriously bent back; while in the centre General Foch had driven in a wedge which bade fair to crumple up the whole line.

There