PART I THE RANKS (continued 2)

More than half an hour later, when we should have been at the pin point in Flêtre, the subaltern halted us at a crossroads in open country and again had a map consultation with the sergeant. Again it was apparently impossible to locate either the crossroads or the rendezvous.

But in the road were two peasants coming towards us. He waited till they came up and then asked them the way in bad German. They looked at him blankly, so he repeated his question in worse French. His pronunciation of Flêtre puzzled them but at last one of them guessed it and began a stream of explanations and pointings.

“What the hell are they talking about?” said the subaltern to the sergeant.

The lance-corporal nudged me. “Did you understand?”

“Yes,” said I.

“Tell him again,” he said. “Go on.”

So again I begged his pardon and explained what the peasants had told him. He looked at me for a moment oddly. I admit that it wasn’t usual for a private to address his officer on parade without being first spoken to. But this was war, the world war, and the old order changeth. Anyhow I was told to ride in front of the troop as guide and did and brought the troop to the rendezvous about twenty minutes late.

The Major was not pleased.

Later in the day the subaltern came around the stables and, seeing me, stopped and said, “Oh—er—you!”

I came to attention behind the horse.

“What’s your name?” said he.

I told him.

“Do you talk French?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where were you educated?”

“France and Oxford University, sir.”

“Oh!” slightly surprised. “Er—all right, get on with your work”—and whether it was he or the sergeant I don’t know, but I had four horses to groom that morning instead of two.

From that moment I decided to cut out being intelligent and remain what the French call a “simple” soldier.

By a strange coincidence there was a nephew of that subaltern in the Brigade of Gunners to which I was posted when I received a commission. It is curious how accurately nephews sum up uncles.

17

When we did not go out on drill orders like that we began the day with what is called rough exercise. It was. In the foggy dawn, swathed in scarfs and Balaklava helmets, one folded one’s blanket on the horse, bitted him, mounted, took another horse on either side, and in a long column followed an invisible lance-corporal across ploughed fields, over ditches, and along roads at a good stiff trot that jarred one’s spine. It was generally raining and always so cold that one never had the use of either hands or feet. The result was that if one of the unbitted led horses became frolicsome it was even money that he would pull the rope out of one’s hands and canter off blithely down the road,—for which one was cursed bitterly by the sergeant on one’s return. The rest of the day was divided between stables and fatigues in that eternal heart-breaking mud. One laid brick paths and brushwood paths and within twenty-four hours they had disappeared under mud. It was shovelled away in sacks and wheelbarrows, and it oozed up again as if by magic. One made herring-bone drains and they merged in the mud. There seemed to be no method of competing with it. In the stables the horses stood in it knee-deep. As soon as one had finished grooming, the brute seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in lying down in it. It became a nightmare.

The sergeant didn’t go out of his way to make things easier for any of us and confided most of the dirtier, muddier jobs to me. There seemed to be always something unpleasant that required “intelligence,” so he said, and in the words of the army I “clicked.” The result was that I was happiest when I was on guard, a twenty-four-hour duty which kept me more or less out of the mud and entirely out of his way.

The first time I went on I was told by the N.C.O. in charge that no one was to come through the hedge that bounded the farm and the road after lights out, and if any one attempted to do so I was to shoot on sight. So I marched up and down my short beat in the small hours between two and four, listening to the far-off muttering of guns and watching the Verey lights like a miniature firework display, praying that some spy would try and enter the gap in the hedge. My finger was never very far from the trigger, and my beat was never more than two yards from the hedge. I didn’t realize then that we were so far from the line that the chances of a strolling Hun were absurd. Looking back on it I am inclined to wonder whether the N.C.O. didn’t tell me to shoot on sight because he knew that the sergeant’s billet was down that road and the hedge was a short cut. The sergeant wasn’t very popular.

There was an estaminet across the road from the farm, and the officers had arranged for us to have the use of the big room. It was a godsend, that estaminet, with its huge stove nearly red-hot, its bowls of coffee and the single glass of raw cognac which they were allowed to sell us. The evenings were the only time one was ever warm, and although there was nothing to read except some old and torn magazines we sat there in the fetid atmosphere just to keep warm.

The patron talked vile French but was a kindly soul, and his small boy, Gaston, aged about seven, became a great friend of mine. He used to bring me my coffee, his tiny, dirty hands only just big enough to hold the bowl, and then stand and talk while I drank it, calling me “thou.”

“T’es pas anglais, dis?”

And I laughed and said I was French.

“Alors comment qu’ t’es avec eux, dis?”

And when one evening he came across and looked over my shoulder as I was writing a letter, he said, “Qué que t’écris, dis?”

I told him I was writing in English.

He stared at me and then called out shrilly, “Papa. V’là l’Français qu’écrit en anglais!”

He had seen the Boche, had little Gaston, and told me how one day the Uhlans had cleaned the estaminet out of everything,—wine, cognac, bread, blankets, sheets—les sales Boches!

As the days dragged muddily through it was borne in on me that this wasn’t fighting for King and Country. It was just Tidworth over again with none of its advantages and with all its discomforts increased a thousand-fold. Furthermore the post-office seemed to have lost me utterly, and weeks went by before I had any letters at all. It was heart-breaking to see the mail distributed daily and go away empty-handed. It was as though no one cared, as though one were completely forgotten, as though in stepping into this new life one had renounced one’s identity. Indeed, every day it became more evident that it was not I who was in that mud patch. It was some one else on whom the real me looked down in infinite amazement. I heard myself laugh in the farm at night and join in choruses; saw myself dirty and unbathed, with a scarf around my stomach and another round my feet, and a woollen helmet over my head; standing in the mud stripped to the waist shaving without a looking-glass; drinking coffee and cognac in that estaminet.—Was it I who sometimes prayed for sleep that I might shut it all out and slip into the land of dreams, where there is no war and no mud? Was it I who when the first letters arrived from home went out into the rainy night with a candle-end to be alone with those I loved? And was it only the rain which made it so difficult to read them?

18

The culminating point was reached when I became ill.

Feeling sick, I couldn’t eat any breakfast and dragged myself on parade like a mangy cat. I stuck it till about three in the afternoon, when the horse which I was grooming receded from me and the whole world rocked. I remember hanging on to the horse till things got a bit steadier, and then asked the sergeant if I might go off parade. I suppose I must have looked pretty ill because he said yes at once.

For three days I lay wrapped up on the straw in the barn, eating nothing; and only crawling out to see the doctor each morning at nine o’clock. Of other symptoms I will say nothing. The whole affair was appalling, but I recovered sufficient interest in life on the fourth morning to parade sick, although I felt vastly more fit. Indeed, the argument formed itself, “since I am a soldier I’ll play the ‘old soldier’ and see how long I can be excused duty.” And I did it so well that for three more days I was to all intents and purposes a free man. On one of the days I fell in with a corporal of another squadron, and he and I got a couple of horses and rode into Bailleul, which was only about three miles south of us, and we bought chocolates, and candles and books, and exchanged salutes with the Prince of Wales, who was walking in the town. Then we came back with our supplies after an excellent lunch at the hotel in the square, the “Faucon,” and had tea with the officers’ servants in a cosy little billet with a fire and beds. The remarks they made about their officers were most instructive, and they referred to them either as “my bloke” or “’is lordship.”

And there it was I met again a man I had spoken to once at Tidworth, who knew French and was now squadron interpreter. He was a charming man of considerable means, with a large business, who had joined up immediately on the outbreak of war. But being squadron interpreter he messed with the officers, had a billet in a cottage, slept on a bed, had a private hip bath and hot water, and was in heaven, comparatively. He suggested to me that as my squadron lacked an interpreter (he was doing the extra work) and I knew French it was up to me.

“But how the devil’s it to be done?” said I, alight with the idea.

“Why don’t you go and see the Colonel?” he suggested.

I gasped. The Colonel was nearly God.

He laughed. “This is ‘Kitchener’s Army,’” he said, “not the regular Army. Things are a bit different.” They were indeed!

So I slept on the idea and every moment it seemed to me better and better, until the following evening after tea, instead of going to the estaminet, I went down to squadron headquarters. For about five minutes I walked up and down in the mud, plucking up courage. I would rather have faced a Hun any day.

At last I went into the farmyard and knocked at the door. There were lights in the crack of the window shutters.

A servant answered the door.

“Is the Colonel in?” said I boldly.

He peered at me. “What the perishin’ ’ell do you want to know for?”

“I want to see him,” said I.

“And what the ’ell do you want to see him for?”

I was annoyed. It seemed quite likely that this confounded servant would do the St. Peter act and refuse me entrance into the gates.

“Look here,” I said, “it doesn’t matter to you what for or why. You’re here to answer questions. Is the Colonel in?”

The man snorted. “Oh! I’m ’ere to answer questions, am I? Well, if you want to know, the Colonel ain’t in.—Anything else?”

I was stumped. It seemed as if my hopes were shattered. But luck was mine—as ever. A voice came from the inner room. “Thomson! Who is that man?”

The servant made a face at me and went to the room door.

“A trooper, sir, from one of the squadrons, askin’ to see the Colonel.”

“Bring him in,” said the voice.

My heart leapt.

The servant returned to me and showed me into the room.

I saw three officers, one in shirt sleeves, all sitting around a fire. Empty tea things were still on a table. There were a sofa, and armchairs and bright pictures, a pile of books and magazines on a table, and a smell of Egyptian cigarettes. They all looked at me as I saluted.

“Thomson tells me you want to see the Colonel,” said the one whose voice I had heard, the one in shirt sleeves. “Anything I can do?”

It was good to hear one’s own language again, and I decided to make a clean breast of it.

“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said I. “Perhaps you can. I came to ask for the interpretership of my squadron. We haven’t got one and I can talk French. If you could put in a word for me I should be lastingly grateful.”

His next words made him my brother for life. “Sit down, won’t you,” he said, “and have a cigarette.”

Can you realize what it meant after those weeks of misery, with no letters and the eternal adjective of the ranks which gets on one’s nerves till one could scream, to be asked to sit down and have a cigarette in that officers’ mess?

Speechless, I took one, although I dislike cigarettes and always stick to a pipe. But that one was a link with all that I’d left behind, and was the best I’ve ever smoked in my life. He proceeded to ask me my name and where I was educated, and said he would see what he could do for me, and after about ten minutes I went out again into the mud a better soldier than I went in. That touch of fellow feeling helped enormously. And he was as good as his word. For the following morning the Major sent for me.

19

The rain had stopped and there had been a hard frost in the night which turned the roads to ice. The horses were being walked round and round in a circle, and the Major was standing watching them when I came up and saluted.

“Yes, what is it?” he said.

“You sent for me, sir.”

“Oh—you’re Gibbs, are you?—Yes, let’s go in out of this wind.” He led the way into the mess and stood with his back to the fire.

Every detail of that room lives with me yet. One went up two steps into the room. The fireplace faced the door with a window to the right of the fireplace. There was a table between us with newspapers on it, and tobacco and pipes. And two armchairs faced the fire.

He asked me what I wanted the interpretership for. I told him I was sick of the ranks, that I had chucked a fascinating job to be of use to my King and country, and that any fool trooper could shovel mud as I did day after day.

He nodded. “But interpreting is no damned good, you know,” he said. “It only consists in looking after the forage and going shopping with those officers who can’t talk French.—That isn’t what you want, is it?”

“No, sir,” said I.

“Well, what other job would you like?”

That floored me completely. I didn’t know what jobs there were in the squadron and told him so.

“Well, come and have dinner to-night and we’ll talk about it,” said he.

Have dinner! My clothes reeked of stables, and I had slept in them ever since I arrived.

“That doesn’t matter,” said the Major. “You come along to-night at half-past seven. You’ve been sick all this week. How are you? Pretty fit again?”

He’s Brigadier-General now and has forgotten all about it years ago. I don’t think I ever shall.

There were the Major, the Captain and one subaltern at dinner that night—an extraordinary dinner—the servant who a moment previously had called me “chum” in the kitchen gradually getting used to waiting on me at the meal, and I, in the same dress as the servant, gradually feeling less like a fish out of water as the officers treated me as one of themselves. It was the first time I’d eaten at a table covered with a white tablecloth for over two months, the first time I had used a plate or drunk out of a glass, the first time I had been with my own kind.—It was very good.

The outcome of the dinner was that I was to become squadron scout, have two horses, keep them at the cottage of the interpreter, where I was to live, and ride over the country gathering information, which I was to bring as a written report every night at six o’clock. While the squadron was behind the lines it was, of course, only a matter of training myself before other men were given me to train. But when we went into action,—vistas opened out before me of dodging Uhlan patrols and galloping back with information through a rain of bullets. It was a job worth while and I was speechless with gratitude.

It was not later than seven o’clock the following morning, Christmas Eve, 1914, that I began operations. I breakfasted at the cottage to which I had removed my belongings overnight, and went along towards the stables to get a horse.

The man with whom I had been mucking in met me outside the farm. He was in the know and grinned, cheerily.

“The sergeant’s lookin’ for you,” he said. “He’s over in the stables.”

I went across. He was prowling about near the forage.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” said I.

He looked at me and stopped prowling. “Where the——” and he asked me in trooperese where I had been and why I wasn’t at early morning stables. I told him I was on a special job for the Major.

He gasped and requested an explanation.

“I’m knocked off all rolls, and parades and fatigues,” I said. “You’ve got to find me a second horse. They are both going to be kept down the road, and I shall come and see you from time to time when I require forage.”

He was speechless for the first and only time. It passed his comprehension.

At that moment the sergeant-major came in and proceeded to tell him almost word for word what I had told him. It was a great morning, a poetic revenge, and eventually I rode away leading the other horse, the sergeant’s pop eyes following me as I gave him final instructions as to where to send the forage.

Later, as I started out on my first expedition as squadron scout, he waved an arm at me and came running. His whole manner had changed, and he said in a voice of honey, “If you should ’appen to pass through Ballool would you mind gettin’ me a new pipe?—’Ere’s five francs.”

I got him a pipe, and in Bailleul sought out every likely looking English signaller or French officer, and dropped questions, and eventually at 6 p.m., having been the round of Dramoutre, Westoutre, and Locre, took in a rather meagre first report to the Major. How I regretted that I had never been a newspaper reporter! However, it was a beginning.

The following morning was Christmas Day, cold and foggy, and before starting out I went about a mile down the road to another farm and heard Mass in a barn. An odd little service for Christmas morning. The altar was made of a couple of biscuit boxes in an open barn. The priest wore his vestments, and his boots and spurs showed underneath. About half a dozen troopers with rifles were all the congregation, and we kneeled on the damp ground.

The first Christmas at Bethlehem came to mind most forcibly. The setting was the same. An icy wind blew the wisps of straw and the lowing of a cow could be heard in the byre. Where the Magi brought frankincense and myrrh we brought our hopes and ambitions and laid them at the Child’s feet, asking Him to take care of them for us while we went out to meet the great adventure. What a contrast to the previous Christmas, in the gold and sunshine of Miami, Florida, splashed with the scarlet flowers of the bougainvillea, and at night the soft, feathery palms leaning at a curious angle in the hard moonlight as though a tornado had once swept over the land.

The farm people sold me a bowl of coffee and a slice of bread, and I mounted and rode away into the fog with an apple and a piece of chocolate in my pocket, the horse slipping and sliding on the icy road. Not a sound broke the dead silence except the blowing of my horse and his hoofs on the road. Every gun was silent during the whole day, as though the Child had really brought peace and good will.

I got to within a couple of miles of Ypres by the map, and saw nothing save a few peasants who emerged out of the blanket of fog on their way to Mass. A magpie or two flashed across my way, and there was only an occasional infantryman muffled to the eyes when I passed through the scattered villages.

About midday I nibbled some chocolate, and watered my horse and gave him a feed, feeling more and more miserable because there was no means of getting any information. My imagination drew pictures of the Major, on my return with a blank confession of failure, telling me that I was no good and had better return to duty. As the short afternoon drew in, my spirits sank lower and lower. They were below zero when at last I knocked reluctantly at the door of the mess and stood to attention inside. To make things worse all the officers were there.

“Well, Gibbs?” said the Major.

“It isn’t well, sir,” said I. “I’m afraid I’m no damn good. I haven’t got a thing to report,” and I told him of my ride.

There was silence for a moment. The Major flicked off the ash of his cigarette. “My dear fellow,” he said quietly, “you can’t expect to get the hang of the job in five minutes. Don’t be impatient with it. Give it a chance.”

It was like a reprieve to a man awaiting the hangman.

20

The squadron, having been on duty that day, had not celebrated Christmas, but the estaminet was a mass of holly and mistletoe in preparation for to-morrow, and talk ran high on the question of the dinner and concert that were to take place. There were no letters for me, but in spite of it I felt most unaccountably and absurdly happy as I left the estaminet and went back to my billet and got to bed.

The interpreter came in presently. He had been dining well and Christmas exuded from him as he smoked a cigar on the side of his bed.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, “your commission has come through. They were talking about it in mess to-night. Congratulations.”

Commission! My heart jumped back to the Marlborough Hotel.

“I expect you’ll be going home to-morrow,” he went on; “lucky devil.”

Home! Could it be? Was it possible that I was going to escape from all this mud and filth? Home. What a Christmas present! No more waiting for letters that never came. No more of the utter loneliness and indifference that seemed to fill one’s days and nights.

The dingy farm room and the rough army blanket faded and in their place came a woman’s face in a setting of tall red pines and gleaming patches of moss and high bracken and a green lawn running up to a little house of gables, with chintz-curtained windows, warm tiles and red chimneys, and a shining river twisting in stately loops. And instead of the guns which were thundering the more fiercely after their lull, there came the mewing of sandpipers, and the gurgle of children’s laughter, and the voice of that one woman who had given me the vision.—

21

The journey home was a foretaste of the return to civilisation, of stepping not only out of one’s trooper’s khaki but of resuming one’s identity, of counting in the scheme of things. In the ranks one was a number, like a convict,—a cipher indeed, and as such it was a struggle to keep one’s soul alive. One had given one’s body. They wanted one’s soul as well. By “they” I mean the system, that extraordinary self-contained world which is the Army, where the private is marched to church whether he have a religion or not, where he is forced to think as the sergeant thinks and so on, right up to the General commanding. How few officers realise that it is in their power to make the lives of their juniors and men a hell or a heaven.

It was a merciful thing for me that I was able to escape so soon, to climb out of that mental and physical morass and get back to myself.

From the squadron I went by motor lorry to Hazebrouck and thence in a first-class carriage to Boulogne, and although the carriage was crowded I thought of the horse truck in which I’d come up from Rouen, and chuckled. At Boulogne I was able to help the Major, who was going on leave. He had left a shirt case in the French luggage office weeks before and by tackling the porter in his own tongue, I succeeded in digging it out in five minutes. It was the only thing I’ve ever been able to do to express the least gratitude,—and how ridiculously inadequate.

We spent the night in a hotel and caught the early boat, horribly early. But it was worth it. We reached London about two in the afternoon, a rainy, foggy, depressing afternoon, but if it had snowed ink I shouldn’t have minded. I was above mere weather, sailing in the blue ether of radiant happiness. In this case the realisation came up to and even exceeded the expectation. Miserable-looking policemen in black waterproof capes were things of beauty. The noise of the traffic was sweetest music. The sight of dreary streets with soaked pedestrians made one’s eyes brim with joy. The swish of the taxi round abrupt corners made me burst with song. I was glad of the rain and the sort of half-fog. It was so typically London and when the taxi driver stopped at my brother’s house and said to me as I got out, “Just back from the front, chum?” I laughed madly and scandalously overtipped him. No one else would ever call me chum. That was done with. I was no longer 7205 Trooper A. H. Gibbs, 9th Lancers. I was Second Lieutenant A. Hamilton Gibbs, R.F.A. and could feel the stars sprouting.

My brother wasn’t at home. He was looking like an admiral still and working like the devil. But his wife was and she most wisely lent me distant finger tips and hurried me to a bath, what time she telephoned to my brother.

That bath! I hadn’t had all my clothes off more than once in six weeks and had slept in them every night. Ever tried it? Well, if you really want to know just how I felt about that first bath, you try it.

I stayed in it so long that my sister-in-law became anxious and tapped at the door to know if I were all right. All right! Before I was properly dressed—but running about the house most shamelessly for all that—my brother arrived.

It was good to see him again,—very good. We “foregathered,”—what?

And the next morning scandalously early, the breakfast things still on the table, found me face to face once more with the woman who had brought me back to life. All that nightmare was immediately washed away for ever. It was past. The future was too vague for imaginings but the present was the most golden thing I had ever known.