And We Go On (15 page)

We moved to Berthonaval Wood and there we went for scout instruction to a small glade that seemed remote from war. Dashes of blue cornflower, scarlet poppies, and yellow mustard added a vivid touch to the sun-drenched grass. All around was a background of glossy sheen, a wall of still green trees. Then the expected happened. The “umptyumps” and the “oldtimers” clashed. Jimmy gained victory, though not much damage was done, and the next day all save Brown and Wilson were sent back to their companies. Headquarters did not want the turbulent bluenoses about. They disturbed the tranquility, disrupted the even tenor of head-quarter ways. Brown would never be troublesome. He was a quiet, inoffensive plodder, and would be a good billet orderly. Wilson was impulsive but had the making of as good a scout as any there.

We went back to Lozingham and were billeted in a barn. A new officer took command of fourteen platoon, Mcintrye, one of the “originals” who had been a sergeant. He was a rough and ready Scot, and a splendid soldier; we all liked him. We had an ideal vacation in that village. The weather was wonderful, glorious summer, dazzling sun and very hot, but cool and starlight at night. There was an aerodrome at Auchel, just above us, and at all hours the planes were roaring overhead. I chummed with
Melville. He had never for a moment believed any of Freddy's predictions, but scoffed at them, and he was a good man in the line. Beside us were Mickey and Jerry and Tommy, of the old gang, and Eddie was in another billet. Hughes, a 73rd man, was our corporal, and I found him a splendid fellow, a little too easy to maintain discipline, but “white” to the core. Christensen was stretcher bearer in another platoon and I got acquainted with our man Stewart, the kind-voiced fellow who told me about Laurie. Laurie, however, had recovered. We had had a letter from him. He was still in hospital and would never come back to the trenches. Sam, the miner, looked more sour than ever, and the surly cook would not speak, but I loved being with the company.

Mcintyre started at once to re-build the platoon. He got three of the poor men transferred to other work, and looked after us like children. He came to see our rations, our meals, our quarters, and made us drill and act smartly on parade. Every man was solidly for him. In my section were four of our draft, Barron, an athlete; Sambro, a dark-faced lad who had not missed a scrap since joining; Hale, husky; and Hayward, whom I fished out of the water hole at Vimy. The others were Luggar, a late arrival, Johnson, an English lad, and Orr, a lanky fellow, an “original,” who had been, until then, on a job in London. He was a sort of comic singer, and “Old Bill” took a great delight in imitating him, while we all called him “oldtimer.”

Jennings, a big man from the 73rd, was in the platoon, and did not like the French. The boys were better singers than any of the various canteen choirs I heard and the two ladies next door were very appreciative, bringing us offerings of coffee whenever a special selection was rendered. Melville always said that they were bribes for us to stop singing and Jennings backed him. He did not want to see them at all. Orders were issued that we were to have “physical jerks” before breakfast. It was an idiotic arrangement, but persisted for a short time. The bugler roused us and we were to don shorts and hurry to the training field where for half an hour we were supposed to go through snappy workouts. No one would move quickly. We wanted our tea and bacon and the goo that made Scotland famous before we could feel like jumping or running. The first morning Mcintyre raced in the lead away down the field lane, calling us to follow him. We did, but at a distance, and he turned and loosed his tongue, calling us cripples and babies and all kinds of soft pets. Melville gently
reminded him that we were not officers, that we had not come from ten months of good living in England, and that even now we had not four-course meals awaiting us, and batmen to serve us, when we went back from our work out.

Mcintyre took it all in good part. Then turned us about and offered five francs to anyone who could keep up with him on the way back. I had done considerable running in Canada, it was in the family, Steve having a cup for the eighteen-and-under hundred-yard championship of the Maritimes, and I trimmed the officer without trying extra hard. Barron also got in ahead of him, and Mcintyre did not know what to say. In a day or so the before-breakfast foolishness was eliminated. It was announced that a prize would be given for the best-drilled platoon in the brigade, and at once Mcintyre set to work. He took sole charge and in a short time we were like a well-oiled machine, and really took a pleasure in the work. Any soldier must like to belong to a smart unit. We met the other platoons and defeated them easily, one by one, until we came to the finals for the battalion championship. Tommy heard a rumour that morning to the effect that some were getting a day's leave, and that the rest of the company was being taken to a good show in Auchel. That decided the issue. When we took the field we purposely made a few mistakes, and lost our chance. Mcintyre, we expected, would be raging. Instead he stood and gazed at us, then grinned. “You blighters let me down,” he said. “You could beat those others without trying, but, I'm glad you did. I want to have a good time myself.”

No officer ever met a difficult situation more diplomatically, whether he was sincere or not.

Melville got acquainted with the madame next door and often milked her cow and did other chores. He was like a big kid, always carrying on. One night Hale went to help him and as they teased madame, Johnson thought they were going too far. He was rather odd, a quiet lad, very fair-skinned, and resented anything said about the French. There were words, then blows. He and Hale were in a wild scrap, and Hale knocked him out. Madame explained volubly that the men were not doing any harm, but really helping her.

Two more “originals” came to the company – Captain Grafftey, who took command, and Clark, a sergeant. Davies was now sergeant-major, though the original S.M. was still with us. He had the Distinguished Conduct
Medal and the Military Medal, and was to go to the Depot as an instructor. We marched to Cite St. Pierre and did a short trip in at Hill 70. There had been hard fighting there by the Canadians but our share was nil. Beyond enduring the terrible stench from unburied bodies in August heat, and considerable shelling, there was little to record. A second trip at Fosse 10 was but a routine tour. That sector was a zigzag warren of old trenches and enormous slag heaps, rusting wire and rotting sandbags, The slag heaps dominated, grim, shell-pounded hillocks, sombre sentries in sombre landscape.

CHAPTER IV

Passchendale

We went to the trenches in front of Mericourt and there “A” Company captured two German patrols in a few hours. The battalion put out a party in front to cover the relief of posts. It was in charge of Izzy, and his Lewis gunner was one of our old draft, Leslie, a big six-footer, whose helper was Jackson, another of our men and just as big. They saw the Germans coming toward them, a small patrol, and lay low until they were close, when Leslie rose with his gun ready. There was no fighting, the Huns surrendered. When they got the prisoners to the trench they questioned them and found that a second patrol was expected. Izzy took his men out again and bagged the second lot, led by a lance-corporal. For such good work Izzy received the Military Cross and Leslie and Jackson got the Military Medal.

Mcintyre told me that I was to go with him on a patrol and we went far over toward the German lines, remaining out three hours. I think he wanted to get a little glory for himself, and we certainly tried to find a few goose-steppers. Melville was always with me. He was a splendid scout, cool as ice, ready for anything, and could move like a great cat. War was a game wherein those trained were often the most like novices. We had a newcomer who had specialized on scouting and could read a compass like a sailor, yet he was useless, bewildered in no man's land, while Melville could go anywhere with an uncanny sense of direction.

We went out a second night and I got acquainted with “the Professor.” He was a quiet-voiced man, sandy-haired, unnoticed in the platoon, but had held an important position in a college. We crawled out slowly, then separated in three parties of four each. There had been a magnificent sunset,
a flood of exquisite colouring, opals, pinks and crimsons, and I had remarked about it in the Professor's hearing. He crawled beside me as we took up a position where we were to remain for an hour, hoping to trap a patrol, and shivered each time the flares went up. The Hun was having a little fun all by himself, sending up red and green lights as a change from the regular white ones. The red glows made some small pools of water look like big blots of blood, and the green lights gave everything a ghastly, corpse-like sheen. At one spot we disturbed a bunch of rats, and they rustled through the grass and over old rubbish, their snaky tails dragging after them. Their little eyes were malevolent as they watched us and one shuddered when he remembered what they were seeking.

“Are you nervous?” I whispered to the Professor, and as we lay in our position he seemed glad to talk.

“I'm really so frightened that I could jump up and bolt like a wild thing,” he said. “How on earth do you chaps stand it?” Melville and Tommy were on the other side of him.

I tried to convince him that it was only the nervousness of the first night that gripped him, but he argued against me, and, to my surprise, Tommy agreed with him. For the first time I heard my closest friend admit that his heart was in his mouth as he crawled into the region between the wires. “Bird's like a bloody machine,” he said. “I've been beside him for ten months out here and when there's been chaps killed near him, and I've never seen him act shaky. He hasn't got nerves like the rest of us.”

I changed the subject then and talked of other things in order to soothe the new man, and was surprised to find him so well-educated; he should never have been a private in the ranks. He, in turn, told me that he had been surprised. He had been in a rather rough Ontario battalion, and its members had made a specialty of carousals while they were in England, the canteens being their main entertainment. He had expected things as bad or worse in France, and had found our company as fine a group of men as he had ever met. During all that summer I had not seen a dozen drunks in our billets, but the fact had not impressed me before. The Professor then talked about the sunset and asked, rather curiously, how I could be interested in such things, and at the same time intent on killing my fellow men. He spoke of the beauty that belongs to sunsets and dawns and high mountains and still waters and moonlight, and pointed out the
incongruity of a star gleam in a stagnant pool beside us. Everything about us, he said, should be horrible distorted repulsive.

No Germans were abroad in our territory and after a long time Melville and I wormed ahead through the grass, on and on, until we were so close to the enemy trench that we could see its wire barriers and the cruel length of the barbs. Then we went back, and long after I was in my bivvy listening to the heavy hammer strokes of a battery back of Canada Trench, I thought of the Professor's words. It was easy to misjudge character. Men whom no one credited with heroic qualities, revealed them. Others failed pitiably to live up to expectations. There was, I was sure, a strength or weakness in men apart from their real selves, for which they were in no way responsible. And who could know the Professor's calibre? Snobbishness died miserably in the trenches. No artificial imposition could survive in the ranks where inherent value automatically found its level; all shams of superiority fled before such an existence of essentials; but a man's endurance under that which he most dreads was something we could not gauge.

The Professor was a dreamer, which made it harder for him. His imagination led him twice through every danger, tried him cruelly. For every medal earned by the martinet type of soldier, a dozen were deserved by the dreamers. But when I tried to measure myself I failed. It was not physical courage that carried me, far from it, but a state of mind that words will never describe. Each night when I slept I dreamt of Steve, saw him clearly, and when awake, in the trenches at night, out on listening posts,
FELT
him near. In some indefinable way I depended on him. Ever since he had guided me in from that foggy unknown stretch at the back of Vimy I would go anywhere in no man's land. I knew, with a – fanatical, if you like – faith, that a similar touch would lead me straight where I should go. In the trenches, on posts, in any place, I was always watching for him, waiting for him, trying to sense him near me, and in the doing I missed the tensity of dragging hours, and easy fears that seized the unoccupied mind.

I liked the keen damp air of the mornings of September. At stand-to each man would have a glowing cigarette, each have his collar turned to his chin, his shoulders hunched, and would be pacing the hard-packed trench floor. When he stopped and gazed over the bags he would doze a second – start guiltily, and doze again. The east would shoot with crimson.
Birds would twitter. Then like magic the sun would glitter on the dew-covered weeds and wet wire. There would be mists in the hollows, often extensive, so that the distant slag heaps would appear dark islands in a woolly sea. Gradually the sun would gain strength, and the vapors would dissolve. Then we went back to our shelters and odours of tea and bacon made each man happy.

On the third night our patrol was divided into two parties. Mcintyre was not with us, and the officer we had was “windy.” We did not go out nearly as far as usual, and when I took him to a spot near three trees where there was a short sap with German greatcoat in it, he was alarmed. He led us over to the right and left Melville and I to “guard” his flank. There was a length of low ground, almost ravine-like, through which an enemy patrol might pass and he told us to stay on its banks. We lay there in the grass. It was quiet and we were tired. It was our third successive night of crawling, and so Melville took a length of fine wire he always carried and made a neat trip string at the head of the long pocket. Then we relaxed, relaxed thoroughly and slept.