Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1204 page)

They lay at Quiévy for the next week employed in cleaning up dirty billets, while the 3rd and 2nd Brigades of the Division were cleaning out the enemy rear-guards in front of them from the west bank of the Selle River, and roads and railways were stretching out behind our armies to bring redoubled supply of material. One of the extra fatigues of those days was to get the civil population out of the villages that the enemy were abandoning. This had to be done by night, for there is small chivalry in the German composition. Quiévy was shelled at intervals, and no parades larger than of a platoon were, therefore, allowed. The weather, too, stopped a scheme of field-operations in the back area between Quiévy and Bevillers, and a washed and cleanly clothed battalion were grateful to their Saints for both reliefs.

On the 17th October the Sixty-first Division took over the Guards area, and that afternoon the Battalion left Quiévy by cross-country tracks for Boussieres and moved into position for what turned out to be all but the last stroke of the long game.

The enemy on that front were by now across the steeply banked Selle River, but the large, straggling village of Solesmes, of which St. Python is practically a suburb, was still held by them and would have to be cleaned out house-to-house. Moreover, it was known to be full of French civils and getting them away in safety would not make the situation less difficult.

ST. PYTHON

It was given out at Brigade conference on the 17th that the Sixty-first Division would take place on the right of the Guards Division and the Nineteenth on its left in the forthcoming attack, and that the Sixty-first would attend to Solesmes, while the Guards Division pushed on north-east between St. Python and Haussy on a mile-wide front through the village of Escarmain to Capelle, a distance of some three and a half miles. The 1st and 3rd Brigades would lead, the 2nd in reserve, and the passage of the Selle would be effected in the dark by such bridges as the Sappers could put up.

The Battalion moved nearer their assembly areas to St. Hilaire-les-Cambrai, on the night of the 18th after Company Commanders had thoroughly explained to their men what was in store; and on the 19th those commanders, with the Intelligence Officer, Captain Vernon, went up to high ground overlooking the battlefield. It was a closer and more crumpled land than they had dealt with hitherto, its steep-sided valleys cut by a multitude of little streams running from nor’-west to south-east, with the interminable ruled line of the Bavai road edging the great Forest of Mormal which lay north of Landrecies. The wheel was swinging full circle, and men who had taken part in that age-ago retreat from Mons, amused themselves by trying to pick out familiar details in the landscape they had been hunted across four years before. But it was misty and the weather, faithful ally of the Germans to the last, was breaking again. Just as the Battalion moved off from St. Hilaire to their area on the railway line from Valenciennes to Le Cateau, rain began and continued till six next morning, making every condition for attack as vile as it could. They dug them shallow trenches in case of shell-fire, and sent down parties to reconnoitre the bridges over the Selle. Four bridges were “available,” i. e. existed in some shape, on or near the Battalion front, but no one had a good word to say for any of them.

There is a tale concerning the rivers here, which may be given (without guarantee) substantially as told “Rivers round Maubeuge? ‘Twas
all
rivers — the Aunelle and the Rhônelle and the Pronelle, an’ more, too; an’ our Intelligence Officer desirin’ to know the last word concernin’ each one of ‘em before we paddled it. Michael an’ me was for that duty. Michael was a runner, afraid o’ nothing, but no small liar, and him as fed as myself with reportin’ on these same dam’ rivers; and Jerry expendin’ the last of his small-arm stuff round and round the country. I forget which river ‘twas we were scouting, but he was ahead of me, the way he always was. Presently he comes capering back, ‘Home, please, Sergeant,’ says he. ‘That hill’s stinking with Jerries beyond.’ ‘But the river?’ says I. ‘Ah, come home,’ says Michael, ‘an I’ll learn ye the road to be a V.C.!’ So home we went to the Intelligence Officer, and ‘twas then I should have spoke the truth. But Michael was before me. I had no more than
my
mouth opened when he makes his report, which was my business, me being sergeant (did I tell ye?), to put in. But Michael was before me. He comes out with the width of the river, and its depth, and the nature of its bottom and the scenery, and all and all, the way you’d ha’ sworn he’d been a trout in it. When we was out of hearing, I told him he was a liar’ in respect to his river. ‘River,’ says he, ‘are ye after calling
that
a river? ‘Tis no bigger than a Dickiebush ditch,’ he says. ‘And anyway,’ says he, ‘the Battalion’ll rowl across it in the dark, the way it always does. Ye cannot get wetter than wet, even in the Micks!’ Then his conscience smote him, an’ when his company went down to this river in the dark, Michael comes capering alongside whishpering between his hands: ‘Boys!’ says he, ‘can ye swim, boys? I hope ye can
all
swim for, Saints be my witness, I never wint near the river. For aught I know it may be an arrum of the sea. Ah, lads,
thry
an’ learn to swim!’ he says. Then some one chases him off before the officer comes along; an’ we wint over Michael’s river the way he said we would. Ye can not get wetter than wet — even in the Micks.”

It was a quiet night, except for occasional bursts of machine-gun fire, but there was no shelling of the assembly area as the 2nd Grenadiers formed up on their right, with the 2nd Coldstream in reserve. Nos. 1 and 2 Companies (Captain A. W. L. Paget, and Lieutenant E. M. Harvey, M.C.) moved off first, No. 3 in support (Captain Bambridge), and No. 4 (2nd Lieutenant O. R. Baldwin) in reserve. The barrage opened with a percentage of demoralising flame-shells. There was very little artillery retaliation, and beyond getting rather wetter than the rain had already made them, the Battalion did not suffer, except from small-arm fire out of the dark. The first objective, a section of the Solesmes–Valenciennes road, was gained in an hour, with but eight casualties, mainly from our own “shorts” in the barrage, and several prisoners and machine-guns captured. The prisoners showed no wish to fight.

The companies had kept direction wonderfully well in the dark, and reached the second and last objective under increased machine-gun fire, but still without much artillery. The 3rd Guards Brigade on their left had been hung up once or twice, which kept No. 2 Company, the left leading company, and Nos. 3 and 4 (in support) busy at odd times forming defensive flanks against sniping. By half-past five, however, they were all in place, and set to dig in opposite the village of Vertain. Then dull day broke and with light came punishment. The enemy, in plain sight, opened on them with everything that they had in the neighbourhood, from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M. of the 20th. The two front companies were cut off as long as one could see, and a good deal of the stuff was delivered over open sights. It was extremely difficult to get the wounded away, owing to the continuous sniping. But, through providence, or the defect of enemy ammunition, or the depth of the slits the men had dug, casualties were very few. Battalion Headquarters and the ground where No. 4 Company lay up were most thoroughly drenched, though an officer of No. 3 Company, whose experience was large, described his men’s share as “about the worst and most accurate shelling I have been through.” They were, in most places, only a hundred yards away from a dug-in enemy bent on blessing them with every round left over in the retreat. During the night, which was calmer, our Artillery dealt with those mixed batteries and groups so well that, although no man could show a finger above his shelter in some of the company areas, the shelling next day was moderate. The forward posts were still unapproachable, but they sent out patrols from Nos. 1 and 2 Companies to “report on the River Harpies,” the next stream to the Selle, and to keep it under observation. This was an enterprise no commander would have dreamed of undertaking even three months ago. The enemy sniping went on. The 2nd Coldstream, who had been moved up to protect the right flank of the 2nd Grenadiers (the Sixty-first Division, being delayed some time over the clearing up and evacuation of Solesmes, was not yet abreast of them), were withdrawn to billets at St. Hilaire in the course of the afternoon; but word came that neither the Grenadiers nor the Irish need look to be relieved. It rained, too, and was freezing cold at night. Another expert in three years of miseries writes: “One of the worst places I have ever been in. Heavy rain all day and night. . . . More shelling if we were seen moving about. Heavy rain all day. . . . Soaked through and shivering with cold.” The Diary more temperately: “The men were never dry from the time they left their billets in St. Hilaire on the evening of the 20th, and there was no shelter whatever for any of the companies.” So they relieved them during the night of the 21st, front Companies 1 and 2 returning to the accommodation vacated by their supports, 3 and 4.

Battalion relief came when the 24th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (Second Division) took over from them and the Grenadiers and got into position for their attack the next morning. An early and obtrusive moon made it difficult to fetch away the front-posts, and though the leading company reached the Selle on its way back at a little after five, the full relief was not completed till half-past nine, when they had to get across-country to the main road and pick up the lorries that took them to “very good billets” at Carnières. Their own Details had seen to that; and they arrived somewhere in the early morning “beat and foot-sore,” but without a single casualty in relieving. Their losses for the whole affair up to the time of their relief were one officer (Captain and Adjutant J. B. Keenan ) wounded in the face by a piece of shell, the sole casualty at Battalion Headquarters; ten other ranks killed; forty-two wounded, of whom two afterwards died, and two missing — fifty-five in all.

The companies were officered as follows:

Cleaning up began the next day where fine weather in “most delightful billets” was cheered by the news that the Second Division’s attack on Vertain had been a great success. In those days they looked no further than their neighbours on either side.

Every battle, as had been pointed out, leaves its own impression. St. Python opened with a wild but exciting chase in the wet and dark, which, at first, seemed to lead straight into Germany. It ended, as it were, in the sudden rising of a curtain of grey, dank light that struck all the actors dumb and immobile for an enormously long and hungry stretch of time, during which they mostly stared at what they could see of the sky above them, while the air filled with dirt and clods, and single shots pecked and snarled round every stone of each man’s limited skyline; the whole ending in a blur of running water under starlight (that was when they recrossed the Selle River), and confused memories of freezing together in lumps in lorries, followed by a dazed day of “shell-madness,” when all ears and eyes were intolerably overburdened with echoes and pictures,. and men preferred to be left alone. But they were washed and cleaned and reclothed with all speed, and handed over to their company officers for the drill that chases off bad dreams. The regimental sergeant-major got at them, too, after their hair was cut, and the massed brigade drums played in the village square of Carnieres, and, ere the end of the month, inter-company football was in full swing.

A draft of ninety-one other ranks joined for duty on the 22nd October. Lieutenant-Colonel Baggallay. M.C., came back from leave and, in the absence of the Brigadier, assumed command of the Brigade, and Captain D. W. Gunston joined.

THE BREAK-UP

On the last day of October they moved from Carnieres to St. Hilaire and took over the 3rd Grenadiers’ billets in the factory there, all of which, house for house, officers and men, was precisely as before the attack on the 20th, ten days ago. But those ten days had borne the British armies on that front beyond Valenciennes in the north to within gun-shot of Le Quesnoy in the centre, and to the Sambre Canal, thirty miles away, in the south. Elsewhere, Lille had been evacuated, the lower half of western Flanders cleared, from the Dutch frontier to Tournai, while almost every hour brought up from one or other of the French, and American armies, on the Meuse and the Argonne, fresh tallies of abandoned stores and guns, and of prisoners gathered in rather than captured. Behind this welter, much as the glare of a mine reveals the facade of a falling town-hall, came word of the collapse of Bulgaria, Turkey, and Austria. The whole of the herd of the Hun Tribes were on the move, uneasy and afraid. It remained so to shatter the mass of their retiring forces in France that they should be in no case to continue any semblance of further war without complete destruction. Were they permitted to slink off unbroken, they might yet make stand behind some shorter line, or manufacture a semblance of a “face” before their own people that would later entail fresh waste and weariness on the world.
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