Part 1 — A BATTERY IN BEING

The author of a little red book "War Establishments," labelled "For Official Use Only" (presumably a gentleman with a brain like an automatic ready-reckoner), probably thought of nothing whatever, certainly of no human being, when he penned the decree "Farrier-Sergeants—per battery—1." But if he could only see the result of his handiwork! For our farrier-sergeant David Evans is simply splendid. He is small and sturdy and middle-aged, with grizzled hair that shows at all times in front of his pushed-back cap. His soft Welsh accent is a joy to hear; his affection for the horses is immense, his industry unflagging, and his workmanship always of the very best. He knows nothing about guns or drill or any kind of soldiering, he is an indifferent rider and in appearance he would never be mistaken for a guardsman! But we have only cast one shoe since he joined us months ago, and he has been known to sit up all night with a sick horse and carry on with his work as usual on the following day, whistling merrily (he always whistles while he works) and hammering away as if his very ration depended upon his shoeing the whole battery before dusk. The Child summed him up with his customary exactitude.

"I love the old farrier," he said, "he's such a merry old man. I bet he's a topping uncle to somebody!"

Then there is the saddler. I know that the formation of our new armies has produced many anomalies, but it is my conviction that our saddler is unique. To start with he is a grandfather! He is a little wizened old man with a nose like a bird's beak and he wears huge thick spectacles. He is sixty-two, and how he got into the service is a mystery. He has never done a parade in his life, but when it comes to leather-work (again I quote the Child) "he's a tiger." The battery was newly formed and living in billets in North Wales when he joined it. His original appearance caused a mild sensation, even amongst that motley and ununiformed assembly. For he wore check trousers and a pair of ancient brown shoes, a tweed tail-coat from the hind pocket of which protruded a red handkerchief, and—most grotesque of all—a battered top hat of brown felt! And in this costume he served his country, quite unconcernedly, for two months before the authorities saw fit to provide him with a khaki suit. It is his habit, no matter where the battery may find itself—in barracks, camp or billets, to seek out a secluded spot (preferably a dark one), to instal himself there with his tools and a tangle of odd straps, threads and buckles, and proceed to make or mend things. For he is one of those queer persons who really like work.

I was not fortunate enough to see him in his civilian garb, but I have a vivid recollection of his first appearance after being issued with a "cap, winter, overseas, with waterproof cover." This cap, though practical, does not tend to add to the smartness of the wearer, even if the wearer is in all other respects smart. But the saddler went to extremes. He managed to put on the cover so that the whole, pulled well down over his ears, resembled a vast sponge bag or an elderly lady's bathing cap, beneath which his spectacles gleamed like the head-lights of a motor-car. The wildest stretch of the imagination could not liken him to any sort of soldier. Nevertheless, after his fashion, he is certainly "doing his bit."

It is, of course, impossible to describe them all. Equally is it impossible to understand them all. I wish I could, for therein lies the secret to almost everything. The sergeant-major, for instance, who is the personification of respectful efficiency—what does he think of this infant unit? From the dignified way in which he says, "Of course in my battery we did so and so" (meaning, of course, his old "regular" battery), I gather that his prejudices are strong and that he harbours a secret longing to go back whence he came. And I sometimes wonder whether he finds himself quite at home in the sergeants' mess. But he shows no outward sign of discontent and he allows no discord: his discipline is stern and unbending. He knows all about every man and every horse, he is always to be found somewhere in the lines, and he is extraordinarily patient at explaining to ignorant persons of all ranks the "service" method of doing everything—from the tying of a headrope to the actual manœuvring of a battery in the field. Last, but by no means least, he is six foot three and broad in proportion, and his voice carries two hundred yards without apparent effort on his part.

The quartermaster-sergeant—I learnt this only a day or so ago—is a revivalist preacher in quieter times; the ration orderly, besides his faculty for wheedling extra bacon out of the supply people, has a magnificent tenor voice; the great majority of the rank and file are miners. It is only comparatively recently that they have really settled down to take a pride in themselves and an intelligent interest in the reputation of their unit. For we are not Ki. We are nearer to being Kv or VI, and we were not amongst the first to be equipped and trained. We got our guns, our horses and our harness late in the day, and we were, perhaps, the least bit rushed. Consequently we were slow to develop, but we are making up for lost time now at an astonishing pace. I can remember a time when, on giving the order "Walk—march" to any given team, there was always an even chance that drivers and horses would disagree as to the necessity for moving off. I can also remember a time (and not so very long ago either) when our gunners had but the smallest conception of what a gun was designed to do and (I know this) rather shrank from the dread prospect of actually firing it. But now we drive with no mean attempt at style; a narrow gateway off a lane is nothing to us, and our horses, artistically matched in teams of bay or black, are prepared to pull their two tons through or over anything within reason with just a "click" of encouragement from the drivers they know and understand. And we open the breech as the gun runs up after the recoil, we call out the fuzes and slap in the next shell with more than mere drill-book smartness; we're beginning to acquire that pride in our working of the guns which is the basis of all good artillery work. In fact we have reached a stage where it would be a wholesome corrective to our conceit to be taken en masse to see the harness, the horses and the gun-drill of some regular battery that has borne the brunt of things since Mons. Then we would go home saying to ourselves, "If the war lasts another two years and we keep hard at it, we'll be as good as they are."

But in the meanwhile we are quite prepared to take on the Hun, moving or stationary, in trenches or in the open, at any range from "point-blank" to six thousand. And we have had it dinned into us, until we yawned and shuffled our feet and coughed, that it is our rôle at all times to help our infantry, whose life is ten times more strenuous than ours, and by whom ultimately victory is won. We know the meaning of the two mottoes on our hats and we are distinctly optimistic. Which is as well....

To-day I visited "the Front." We rode up, a subaltern and I, to see the battery to which our men are at present attached and which we will eventually relieve. It is a strange experience for the uninitiated, such as I am, this riding along the flat and crumbling roads towards the booming of the guns and the desolation of "the line." The battery position, we found, was just on the borderland of this zone of desolation. One would never have suspected the presence of guns unless one had known exactly where to look—and had gone quite close. A partially ruined house on the road-side had its front and one gable end entirely covered with a solid wall of sandbags, but these were the only obvious indications of occupation. This house, however, was the mess and officers' quarters, and the Child was there at the door to welcome us.

"We've had quite a busy morning," he said gaily. "They've been putting four-two's and five-nine's into ——" (—— is a village about a quarter of a mile up the road). "I was just going out to look for fuzes: but perhaps you'd like to see round the position first."

We crossed the road and entered a small orchard. The Child led me up to a large turf-covered mound which had a deep drain all round it and a small door at the back.

"This," he said, rather with the air of a guide showing a visitor round a cathedral, "is No. 4."

I bent my head and stepped inside. The gun-pit (which was not really a pit since its floor was on ground level) was lit only by the narrow doorway at the rear and by what light could filter through the hurdles placed in front of the embrasure. But in the dimness I could just make out the rows and rows of shells all neatly laid in recesses in the walls, the iron girders that spanned the roof and held up its weight of sandbags, brick rubble and—reinforced concrete. Ye gods! concrete—for a field gun! And there, spotlessly clean, ready for instant action, was the gun itself. I felt sorry for it—it seemed so hopelessly out of place, so far removed from its legitimate sphere. To think that an eighteen-pounder, designed for transit along roads and across country, should have come to this!

"The detachment live here," said the Child, and showed me a commodious dug-out connected with the gun-pit by a short tunnel. Inside this dug-out were four bunks and a stove—also a gunner devouring what smelt like a very savoury dinner.

"What will these keep out?" I asked.

"Oh!" replied the Child, airily, "they're 'pip-squeak'[3] and splinter-proof, of course, and they might stop a four-two or even a five-nine. But a direct hit with an eight-inch would make some hole, I expect. Come and see the telephonist's place. It's rather a show spot."

As we were walking towards it a stentorian voice shouted, "Battery action."

Instantly, the few men who had been working on the drains and on the pits, or filling sandbags, dropped their tools and raced to the gun-pits. In a few seconds the battery was ready to fire.

We entered the telephone room—a shell-proof cave really. A man sat at a little table with an improvised but extraordinarily ingenious telephone exchange in front of him and a receiver strapped to his ear. A network of wires went out through the wall above his head. His instrument emitted a constant buzzing of "dots" and "dashes," all of which he disregarded, waiting for his own call. Suddenly he clicked his key in answer, then said—

"Hullo, oh-pip[4]—yes. Target K.—one round battery fire—yes."

This order was repeated to the guns by megaphone.

Bang went No. 1 and its shell whistled and swished away towards its goal.

Bang followed No. 2 just before "No. 1 ready" was called back.

It all seemed astonishingly simple, and it seemed, too, quite unconnected with war and bloodshed. Orders to fire came by telephone from some place thousands of yards in front. The guns were duly fired by men who had no conception of what they were firing at, men who had in all probability never been nearer to the enemy than they were at that moment, and who had in fact not the slightest conception of what the front line looked like. According to order these same men made minute adjustments of angles, ranges, fuzes, until the battery's shells were falling on or very close to some spot selected by the Forward Observing Officer, the one man who really knew what was happening. And when this exacting individual was satisfied, each sergeant duly recorded his "register" of the target upon a printed form, reminding me vaguely of the manner in which a 'bus conductor notes down mysterious figures on a block after referring to his packet of tickets. After which the detachments, receiving the order "Break off," returned to their work or dinners with no thought whatever (I am sure of this) as to where their shell had gone or why or how! But then this was not a "show" but just an ordinary morning's shoot.

We lunched in the mess, a comfortable room with a red-tiled floor and a large open fireplace on which logs of wood crackled merrily. On inquiry I learnt that these same logs were once beams in the church at ——, devastated not long since by heavy shells and now a heap of shapeless ruins from which the marauding soldier filches bricks and iron work. And that church was centuries old and was once beautiful. War is indeed glorious.

I have heard it said that people who live close to Niagara are quite unconscious of the sound of the Falls. I can believe it. Practically speaking, in this part of the world, two minutes never pass, day or night, during which no one fires a gun. But the human beings whose job it is to live and work here evince absolutely no interest if the swish of the shell is away from them and very little if it is coming towards them, unless there appears to be a reasonable chance that it is coming at them. Throughout lunch the next battery to this one was firing steadily. Rather diffidently I asked what was going on. The major commanding the battery shrugged his shoulders.

"Old —— has probably got some job on—or he may be merely retaliating," he replied.

I subsided, not knowing then that before the day was over I was to learn more about this same retaliation.

After lunch we set out for the O.P.[5]

"We've got quite a jolly little offensive strafe on this afternoon," remarked the major. "There's some wire-cutting, and while it's going on the attention of the Hun will be distracted by the 'heavies' who are going to bash his parapet a bit. Then at dusk the infantry are to slip across and do some bombing. We'll be rather crowded in the O.P., but I dare say you'll be able to see something."

The Child and my other subaltern, who from his habit of brushing his hair straight back and referring constantly to his blasé past is known to his intimates as Gilbert, came too.

We passed through ——, which is shelled regularly. Some of its houses are completely wrecked, but many are still partially intact. Infantry soldiers lounged about the ruined streets, for this village is used as a rest billet for troops waiting their turn in the trenches: the expression "rest" billet struck me as euphemistic. I noticed that several shells had burst in the graveyard near the church. Even the dead of previous generations, it seems, are not immune from the horrors of this war.

After going up the road for nearly a mile we turned off on to the fields. Every ten yards or so it was necessary either to step over or stoop under a telephone wire. These nerve strings of modern artillery were all neatly labelled—they all belonged to some battery or other. "They strafe this part fairly often," said the major unconcernedly.

It is this unconcern that amazes me. I suppose (or I hope anyway) that I shall get used to this walking about in the open, but, at present, I am far from feeling at ease. The odds against getting hit on this particular bit of ground are enormous, but the chance exists all the same. As a matter of fact we did get one salvo of "pip-squeaks" over as we were going up. They were high, to our left, and at least two hundred yards away, but they made me duck sharply—and then look rather foolish.

The Child pointed to a two-storied ruined house with a skeleton roof.

"Behold 'the Waldorf,'" he said. "Personally myself" (a favourite phrase of his) "I think it's rather a jolly O.P."

Approaching it, we crossed some derelict trenches—our front line before the battle of X——. I felt somehow that I was standing on holy ground—on ground that had been wrested back from the invaders at a cost of many hundreds of gallant lives and an infinite amount of pain and suffering.

Several batteries observe from "the Waldorf," and I found that for all its dilapidated appearance it was astonishingly strong inside. Telephone wires ran into it from all directions, and there were several signallers sitting about cooking over braziers or, if actually on duty, sitting motionless beside their instruments.

Except for a narrow passage-way and a small recess for the operators, the entire ground floor was blocked solid from earth to ceiling with sandbags; there is a distinct feeling of security to be derived from eight or ten feet thickness of clay-filled bags!

We climbed a wooden ladder and squeezed into the tiny room upstairs from which the fire of this particular battery is directed. A long low loophole carefully protected with sandbags and steel plates provided me with my first view of the front.

I was now some fifteen feet or so above ground level and could see the backs of all our lines of trenches, could see the smoke of burning fires and men walking casually up and down or engaged in digging, planking, revetting, and so on. Beyond was the front line—less distinct and with fewer signs of activity in it; beyond that again a strip of varying width, untrampled, green and utterly forsaken—No Man's Land. A few charred tree-trunks from which every branch and twig had been stripped by shell fire, stuck up at intervals. I could see the first German parapet quite plainly and (with glasses) other lines behind it, and numerous wriggling communication trenches.

So this was "the Front," that vague term that comes so glibly to the lips of the people at home. I looked at it intently for a long time and I found that one idea crowded all others from my mind.

"What madness," I thought, "this is which possesses the world! What criminal waste, not only of lives and money, but of brains, ideas, ingenuity and time, all of which might have been devoted to construction instead of to destruction."

The Child noticed my absorption, read my thoughts perhaps, and translated them into his own phraseology thus:—"Dam' silly business, isn't it, when you come to think of it?"

The expression fitted. It is a damnably silly business, but, if we are to secure what the whole world longs for—a just and lasting peace—we have got to see this business through to the end, however silly, however wasteful it may seem. We have got to "stick it," as the soldier says, until the gathering forces are strong enough to break the barrier beyond all hope of repair; to break it and then to pour through to what will be the most overwhelming victory in the history of the world....

The major turned his head and spoke into a voice-tube beside him.

"Battery action," he said.

The operator on the ground floor repeated his words into a telephone. I pictured over again what I had seen in the morning; the detachments doubling to the places and the four guns instantly ready to answer the call.

It is altogether astonishing, this siege warfare. An officer sits in a ruined house, strongly fortified, and not so many hundred yards from the enemy. From there with ease and certainty he controls the fire of his four guns. He knows his "zone" and every object in it as completely as he knows his own features in a looking-glass. Further, he is connected by telephone with the infantry which he supports, and through the medium of his own headquarters with various other batteries. Normally this "observation" work is done by a subaltern, who, nowadays, thank Heaven and the munitions factories, shoots as much, if not more, than he is shot at. But occasionally the enemy is stirred up and "retaliates." This word, in its present military sense, was unknown before the war. It means just this—

One side organises a bombardment. It carries out its programme, perhaps successfully, perhaps not. The other side, sometimes at once, sometimes afterwards, "retaliates" with its artillery on some locality known to be a tender spot: this is by way of punishment. A year, six months ago even, the aggression came almost entirely from the Germans, and our artillery from lack of ammunition could only retaliate mildly, almost timidly, for fear of drawing down still further vengeance on the heads of its unfortunate infantry. But that state of things has passed for ever. The aggression now is all on our side—I speak, of course, of an ordinary day when there is no "show" on: moreover it is rigorous and sustained and wearing. If and when the Germans reply to our aggression, we re-retaliate, so to speak, with a bombardment that silences him. For instance, to quote from "Comic Cuts" (the official Intelligence Summary is thus named)—

"Yesterday the enemy fired thirty-five shells into ——. We replied with 500."

That is all: but the whole situation on the Western front now is summed up in that bald statement. In these days we have the last word always....

On this particular afternoon, however, we had a definite object in view. The "heavies" by two hours' methodical work made what the Child calls "Hell's own mess" of a selected bit of parapet. Meanwhile a field battery industriously cut the wire in front of it and other field batteries caused "divarsions," as one says in Ireland, by little side-shows of their own. The enemy went to ground, no doubt in comparative safety, and sulked in silence. But as soon as dusk began to creep over the sodden lines, he woke up and started to retaliate. It had evidently occurred to him that we might be going to attack that hole in his parapet.

I watched what seemed like a glorified firework display for five or ten minutes, and somehow gathered the impression that I was merely a spectator. Then there came three sharp cracks outside the loophole—just outside it seemed—followed by the peculiar but unmistakable whirr of travelling splinters.

"Safer downstairs," observed the major, and we descended quickly.

For the next quarter of an hour it really seemed as though the enemy had made up his mind to flatten out the "Waldorf." He had not, of course: he couldn't even see it. What he was really doing was putting a "barrage," or wall of fire, on the road just in front of us to hamper the advance of our supports in case we genuinely meant to attack on any scale. We waited patiently downstairs until it was over; rather like sheltering in a shop from a passing shower.

The signallers packed up their instruments and prepared to go home. Personally I was inwardly none too happy about the prospect of sallying forth into the open; but these men appeared to have no qualms whatever. They were used to it for one thing, and for another they had had a long day and wanted their tea. In such circumstances it takes much to deter the British soldier.

"Seems to be over: might as well 'op it, Bill," said one.

"Righto," answered the other. "Bloomin' muddy this way. What say to going down the road?"

Tack-tack-tack-tack came from the direction of the road. Even war-worn signallers retain their common sense.

"'Ark at that there [adjectived] machine-gun, it's 'ardly worth it;" they agreed and squelched off through the thick clay, grousing about the state of the country but perfectly indifferent to the deafening din around them.

Five minutes later we followed them and walked back, facing the flashes of our own guns, which were still firing steadily—just to make certain of having the last word with the Hun....

It was nearly nine o'clock when we at last clattered into the courtyard of our billet and slipped wearily off our horses. It had been a long day but an interesting one, for we had seen, at close quarters, a battery doing its normal job under the prevailing normal conditions. And very soon now our battery will be in that position, putting the last finishing touches to its education and doing that same job, I hope efficiently. Then, and not till then, will it really be a Battery in Being.