Pass Guard at Ypres (11 page)

“Be damned to that.”

“No use pretending”—with a forced and sudden laugh. “You know all right, but—I'm glad you came—goodbye—goodbye.”

Back to the unknown. But he went as a soldier, not ill-content. He was as good as the next man, whoever he might be, speeding across the seas to war. He, too, for that last night had found companionship.

There are more cheerful experiences than that of returning to mess on a dull
November day, after a long walk during which the Adjutant has explained in the
greatest detail the arrangements which are being made to recall all winter clothing
and equipment, and to issue khaki drill, sun helmets and shorts, and of discovering
after all that the Division is not going to Egypt. Harry's beak nose and
dirty briar pipe had never looked more ugly than when he passed the formal
communication stating that all previous orders were cancelled and that the battalion
would be prepared to return to the Ypres sector in two days. It was a damned
uncomfortable mess, as Freddy Mann had always said. The tea was cold and the stove
wasn't working. The rain hadn't stopped for a week, and there was no
reason now to think that it would ever stop. The whisky had run out and he was sick
of the lot of them: Bill with his swagger, Harry with his filthy temper, and Chips,
who thought he'd known all about it and wasn't so damned clever after
all. However, there was no point in grizzling, and as they had to go back to the
northern sector Freddy Mann was rather glad that he was detailed next day to make
the preliminary tour with Robbie. It happened to be fine, and they decided to start
in
the early hours so as to get a drink or two at Proven on the
way. Impressions by 2 p.m. were favourable. They raised a lunch out of Toler, who
was now at Corps and rather gave them to understand that he had bought the
Château and no small part of the surrounding countryside.

They continued their journey in the afternoon through little lanes and unscarred woods to Brielen, and even after that through comparatively civilised country to Salvation Corner. By this time the northern sector of Ypres seemed well worth a visit. The dug-outs between the Yper and the Yperlette, which had never yet been shelled, were distinctly to be preferred to the filthy line of burrows by the ramparts. Coney Street was a very reasonable trench, and there seemed nothing to complain of when Robbie and Freddy Mann finally arrived, just as dusk was setting in, at the little circle of closely screened dug-outs which marked B.H.Q. at La Belle Alliance Farm. It promised to be an interesting sector. There were farms about, such as Frascati Farm and Wilson's Farm, which were still quite habitable, although they were practically within the lines. The Hun, to all accounts, was quiet, and the only matter for regret was that it was not possible to get to the front line past Forward Cottage by daylight. The main point was that they seemed at last to have got clear of Ypres: they approached to the north of it, and they wouldn't have to go on dodging Jack Johnsons and 5.9s in the square for the rest of their days.

Finally, after a dinner with Brigade near Essex Farm, Robbie and Freddy Mann started back, lorry-jumping
to the Château des Trois Trois and getting a lift in a divisional car from there to St. Jan-ter-Biezen. Robbie, who for a latter-day saint could do himself quite well on occasion, was rather inclined to be philosophical and chatty. Freddy Mann quietly read a letter from Irene Terry, which he had thrust into his pocket just before they started, enjoyed the night, and concluded that all was for the best, that in all probability Egypt would have been a stinking mass of flies, and that one could find a reasonably decent war here without going further afield to look for it.

The mess was empty when they returned at midnight, except for Harry and one of the new arrivals, Guy Cadell, a well-intentioned young man who had been at pains to explain for the last few days that he was “public school,” that he had joined the Southshires because it was a gentleman's regiment, and that the one thing he was living for was “to have a whack at the Boche.” Robbie, after a final blow in the bowl of his pipe, announced that he was full of good whisky, and he thought the best thing to do was to make the best of it by going to bed and letting it go nicely to his head. Freddy Mann felt sleepy, but disinclined to turn in. He sat in the one vacant chair in the little room, idly sipping a whisky and soda and looking round him. Pity now that it had come to an end, that they had to leave this place. For six weeks, ever since the division had been taken out to refit, Watou had been their home, and there had been peace in Watou: parade drill which in its unreality almost reminded him of the
far-gone days in Aldershot, walks with Robbie, Harry or Bill through little country lanes, past wayside shrines to small towns and villages where few, if any, echoes of war had to all appearance penetrated, long evening hours in the café at the corner of the square, dinners with the Yeomanry and with neighbouring companies and battalions, and at night sleep—sleep, above all, sleep—no fitful dozing broken by thoughts of “gas alert” or of the sudden crash of some midnight shell, but a sinking of one's body upon a pillow and a feather bed, and oblivion till day. This very room, which bore signs of something more than the usual fleeting occupation, was associated in his mind with the best days that the war had brought them since they left their kindly home at Eperlecques. Between the crude oleographs of saints upon the walls, interspersed with the inevitable pages of
La Vie Parisienne,
Robbie and himself had hung one or two pictures of their own—photographs of groups, an engraving of Oxford and another of Edenhurst Castle, even a copy of Dante and Beatrice to please Bill's sentimental tastes. The table in the corner was even more heaped than usual with map cases, field-glasses, smoke helmets, literature of all sorts and kinds, old tobacco tins, pipes, packs of cards, ink, writing pads and bottles of Johnnie Walker. He had grown accustomed to seeing Harry, head sunk deep down between his shoulders, glowering genially in his arm-chair, or Bill playing interminable games of patience and cursing softly to himself the while. Yes, damned sorry to go. He
got up, shook himself, grunted goodnight to Harry, and made his way to bed. Two days. And then, with a look of kindly scorn at Guy Cadell as he paused a moment at the door, “You'll have your whack at the Boche all right, you blighter, and I hope you get your bellyful.”

The bell of the Monastery St. Sixte tolls at midnight, and the monks of St.
Sixte go to pray. At 3 in the morning the bell tolls, and they pass to their prayers
again. It is their bell to which they hearken, their bell, their priest's
voice, and no other sounds but these. Guns may be ranged round their monastery and
shells pass overhead; soldiers may come and live for days or weeks within their
walls, rejoicing in the comfort of their barns and beds, but to them these things
are nothing. This war is no war of theirs; these matters for which men fight are
matters which they have put far from them in the purification of their hearts. They
pass, each on his way from cell to chapel, chapel to refectory, refectory back to
cell, in silent communion and silent prayer. There is one among them who must speak
with the outside world to satisfy their carnal needs, and he, whether the stranger
be beggar or wandering penitent or soldier, will care for his needs as well as
theirs. With him let these strangers speak: for themselves they speak to no man,
they owe allegiance under God to one alone, their Abbot; they move, not to a
trumpet, but to the tolling of a bell. These soldiers who come from the west today
to pass to the east tomorrow, who have passed so far a winter and a summer and a
winter, will pass to whatever
destiny they may. But to
themselves, to those of the silent brotherhood, these destinies are nothing. For
them the bell, the watches at midnight, the
via dolorosa
and the peace unspeakable: what is it to them if their bell calls to other hearts
besides their own, if a peace falls sometimes within their walls upon others, who,
carnal perhaps and unregenerate, nevertheless must make offering, they too, of their
bodies, and tread like them the way of pain?

As to others, so to the 6th Battalion Southshires the Monastery St. Sixte was the gateway to the east, to a life the nature of which they knew. It was impossible for them to remain long at St. Sixte, removed by fields and woods from war and even from their fellow men, the guests of a community which held no intercourse with them or with any of the outside world, but which moved day and night through gardens and corridors like ghosts in shrouds of russet brown. There was peace, indeed, for a day or two more, peace in secluded hutments among woods, or in tents on the road to Brielen: peace of a kind even in that line of dug-outs between the Yper and the Yperlette, where one could stand in perfect safety at the doorway and watch the shelling of Essex or Talana Farm fifty yards away across the road. But once over the canvas-screened bridges, and the road ended as all roads to the east must end, as elsewhere, so here, in a waterlogged trench in the middle of a foetid field. For those
who defend Ypres, whether from north or east or south, the lot is equal. Forward Cottage for Bellewarde Farm, the Willows for Railway Wood—there is not much in it when you take over a sector in the Salient on a moonless night in driving rain.

“Think you've done Wipers down, do you? Have a drink and think again.”

Why the devil, thought Freddy Mann, just now of all times, when he was staggering blindly round unknown sapheads with Robbie, must a picture of a pleasantly grinning officer dance suddenly before his eyes, or that other picture, of a peasant woman sitting in the sunlight, talking to him as to a child that had much to learn.

“It is always Ypres,
mon Bébé.
Always at the end is Ypres.”

You will not escape, in the northern sector of the Ypres Salient, the High
Command Redoubt. Stand upon the sloping bank to the east of the Yper, and you will
see the solid wall of sandbags which compose it stand huge and menacing, from the
Pilkem Ridge to Wieltje, dominating in its entirety the low ground between the
German position and the mud-soaked British lines. Make your way across the fields to
La Brique or Friscate Farm, creep up a broken stairway and look through the rafters
of the attic, or stand in the front-line trenches beyond Forward Cottage, periscope
in hand, and its sinister mass will fill the landscape. C.R.A.s will plot its course
upon squared maps, and direct shoots upon C. 15, A. 33, or C. 14, B. 47; Stokes
Mortar officers will select some machine-gun emplacement or noted dugout for their
daily ration; an aeroplane flying low will bomb it along its length, but the next
day it will be restored and remain impregnable, crowned with its fringe of stakes
and wire, as the Germans intended when they built it that it should remain.
Elsewhere, at Zillebeke perhaps or Hooge, the trenches opposite may, if at a cost,
be taken. Here you may plaster the ridge from end to end with high explosive, and
send men forward as you will, but your living waves will break upon unyielding
rock, and at the end of the day those who built the High
Command Redoubt will be masters of the ridge. You will, if you are wise, keep quiet
within your trenches here. They will shell you on most days between 11 and 12, and 3
and 4, and you will bury your dead and send your casualties down in the daily convoy
past Essex Farm to the dressing station at Salvation Corner; they will watch your
goings and comings and smile from their fastness upon your impotence, but you are
there to do no more than hold the Salient, and so long as you are at Mortaldje
Estaminet and Turco Farm there will still be two good miles between the High Command
Redoubt and Ypres. Issue your sheepskin coats, your cardigans and your smoke
helmets, take over and give up your thigh-boots, keeping strict tally of them as you
enter or leave your sector, wrest from the mud what dry places you can for trenches
and dug-outs, repair your revetments as they collapse, guard your men from lice and
frost-bite—do all these things yourself, but leave your situation report to
your sergeant or sergeant-major to compose: he will do it as well as you, for there
will be nothing new to say.

You may last May have dreamt of an early advance, and have written to say that you expect with luck to be home by Christmas; but now, if you have a soul left, guard it in patience, for it is Christmas now, and now you know. Winter will turn again to summer, and the days will lengthen and shorten to another Christmas, and still another summer will follow before you take the Pilkem Ridge. Only some of your company will be there to see
it: for yourself, you may be there, or there may be some other in your place. You thought, when you joined, you could do something: you know now that you can do nothing worth the doing. It was to Ypres, good fool, that you were glad to come last summer: here, at Ypres, where the High Command Redoubt is master, in bondage you will perforce remain.

“But, Bill, for God's sake——”

“I can't. Do what you like, I can't.”

Freddy Mann looked at Bill, cowering furtively within the darkness of the dug-out.

“But, Bill, old chap, I say——”

Bill came grovelling a little forward. He stretched out his hand and pulled Freddy Mann towards him.

“Tell you——” His hands and head were shaking. “Something's gone—my head or legs. Can't you understand? I can't. Why don't they come and shoot me? God, these shells. I can't——”

Freddy Mann looked quickly along the trench. The men were all ready for patrol. The order had gone out for sentries not to fire. Townroe would be along at any moment now, to see them off. Then what the hell——

“I say, Bill, old chap, remember that first merry raid of ours? Up at Y Wood, you remember. Damned sight worse than this—you remember, old chap, eh?”

“Tell you——” Bill's voice rose to a hysterical note, then sank to a moan. “I can't—what's the use of trying?”

“Oh, Bill, for God's sake, Bill—the men are looking-What the devil do you want, Cadell?”

“Just came to say that——” Guy Cadell looked at the huddled officer with a puzzled expression. “Anything up?”

“Nothing. Just giddy a moment, that's all. Better get—no don't—oh, go to Hell, it's nothing.”

Guy Cadell stood still, anxious to help. He was new to the war, and he was still always anxious to know what was on and help.

“Why don't you go to Hell—no, go and ask Chips to come here a moment; then go to Hell if a shell doesn't get you first.”

This seemed more definite, and Guy Cadell departed upon his complicated errand. Freddy Mann stood over Bill, and spoke almost in a tender and caressing voice.

“But are you sure? You know what it means. Come on, try. Let me help you up.”

“I can't—it's gone—I can't.”

“All ready for patrol, sir.” Sergeant Mitchell's face appeared for a moment at the doorway.

“Right, just coming.” Freddy Mann looked quickly at Bill, then at the parapet and the incessant bursts outside. Last hope.

“You can't?”

Bill whined and moaned. He was cowering further into the dug-out. In the light of a shell his face was green, and his eyes were like an animal's. Last hope. In a minute Townroe would be here, and it would be too late. His hand moved to his pistol.

“You can't—or won't?”

“Oh.” Bill covered his eyes. He tried to rise and fell back, as the dug-out rocked with a sudden explosion. Freddy Mann watched.

“Well?”

“I tell you——”

“Hullo, you chaps!” Chips Viner glanced at the revolver in Freddy Mann's hand. “Just priming up, eh? Well, I say, that damned patrol's off. C.O. thinks the night's a bit too thick. Stand the men down, if I were you, and then turn in. There's nothing else on. Got your situation report done, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Well.” He stooped and looked inside. “That you, Bill? Well, your special dish is off tonight. Never mind, we'll fix one up for you tomorrow. Cheerio, pip, pip.”

Bill crawled forward when the two were left alone.

“I say—does he mean it?”

Slowly Bill got to an erect position in the trench before the dug-out. As if by habit he carefully replaced the sheet, then turned uncertainly to Freddy Mann.

“You know, I wish to God Chips hadn't come. I wish to God you'd shot. I'm done—here, give it to me.”

He made a sudden grab for the pistol. Freddy Mann got him by the neck.

“Don't be a fool. Turn in. You'll be all right tomorrow. And for the Lord's sake stop that whining.” He spoke impatiently.

Bill cowered by the dug-out, looking helplessly at him. His jaw was hanging loose, and he was slobbering.
“Thought you were a sport, Freddy Mann. Thought you were a pal of mine. 'Tisn't much for a pal to do, to shoot a fellow when he asks.”

Freddy Mann ought to have taken Chips's advice and turned in. When one has been for five weeks in and out of the Kaye salient, and between Brielen, Essex Farm and the Mortaldje Estaminet, and is due as far as can be seen for another week at least, it is a pity not to take all the sleep that one can get. The patrol was called off. Good enough. Why not turn in instead of hanging about here alone in an abandoned traverse, looking at the dimly-seen High Command Redoubt towering in front of them and the waste of morass between them. Freddy Mann might have known what would come of it, even if Bamford had not reminded him once again that the only thing to do was to take things as they were, and he'd find a spot of rum on his side of the dug-out. Perhaps, though, it was difficult for him to know, for an utter weariness of flesh and soul comes only seldom to any man, and not usually to a boy who has not yet reached his twentieth year. It came, too, when Freddy Mann was not expecting it: quite suddenly, when peace had fallen and when nothing stirred beside him in the trench or in front of him in No Man's Land. Quite suddenly, that stench of death that was always in his nostrils seemed to enter his inmost being. Death, death—was there anything in the world but skeletons
in shell-holes or on wire, any thought left to think but the thought of death, any hope in life but that of keeping death for twenty-four hours at bay, any object but that of dealing death by bullet or grenade? If only you could have death without this filthy stink. But no, death was a foul thing, and it was death, whether at Hooge, Zillebeke or Forward Cottage, that filled their days and nights. Here, as always, death's reek was round him: he would never be free of it again. In savage blind passion he half climbed on to the parapet and looked around him to Foch Farm upon his left, the Willows behind him, the dark mass upon his right which he supposed was Ypres. To think that saving Ypres, winning the war, protecting Belgium or doing any other of the damned silly things that they told him he was doing, had ever meant anything to him! To think that of his own free will he had put life on one side and given himself to this! Damned little they'd told him of what it was like, or he wouldn't have been here now. They'd talked about the regiment, and comradeship: they hadn't told him that a comradeship of six may in a few weeks become a memory in the mind of one alone, that a regiment, a battalion, a company of which one had grown proud may become within four months a crowd of indifferent strangers. They'd talked to him of courage: he hadn't known that not only a man's body, but his very spirit and soul could be broken, as Bill's—brave, laughing, fearless Bill's—had been broken in those last weeks in front of Ypres. They'd told him of God, they came and preached to him about God's service, as if they fondly
imagined that he was fool enough to believe that God could remain in Heaven and see the torture that men wrought and suffered on earth.

Was there any lie they hadn't told him, any lie that six months ago, poor fool, he would not have believed? He'd paid, that's all, he'd paid: and he was through. He wasn't like Robbie, who could go on calmly, smoking his pipe, rescuing wounded men by daylight, treating the heaviest bombardment as if it were nothing more than a storm of rain. Robbie might have some inner secret to support him: he hadn't. He knew now that this stink of death was all that life meant to him, or could ever mean. It had got most of the others, had death: it would get him soon enough. Why not—he laughed and raised himself a little higher on the parapet—why not save it trouble? He didn't want to die in agony, his guts dropping out and his blood pouring out of a hole the size of a pudding plate like Martin's. He didn't want to crack, like Bill had cracked. He'd just had enough, and he wanted to slip away. It was so easy, too—just a walk along the canal bank past Essex Farm and Hull Farm towards Boesinghe, where the German lines drew to the canal, on and on, with the light breaking, till it came; or a walk from Foch Farm, out towards the Pilkem Ridge—there wouldn't be more than five yards there to go; or in daylight, over Hilltop Farm, or past Forward Cottage over the ridge towards the line; or, simpler still, just over and through the wire, and then on through the marshes till you came to the High Command Redoubt; or, without bothering
to walk at all, this pistol—all those fellows out there were peaceful enough, and they didn't care now whether they stank or not. Why go on, when all you had to live for was to crawl like a hunted rabbit through mud, and see bloody fools who came to you from time to time and told you you were saving Ypres? Why, come to that—he laughed aloud, and looked behind him. Ypres was dead. They'd never told him that, but it was; just bones, like the bones out there. Let the dead look after the dead, the dead could guard Ypres well enough. George Harvey had said that—let——

“Now, if you'll let me 'ave it, sir, I'll just clean your pistol.”

Was anybody alive then? Funny, that dear old Bamford was still alive.

“You don't want to 'old it, not like that you don't, in case—just you let me 'ave it, sir. An' the tot o' rum's still there, and it's time for a bit of a turn in—there's two hours yet before stand-to. Bit done up, sir, that's what it is. I remember when I was with Methuen at Magersfontein——”

That wasn't death carrying him. It was Bamford, at least it sounded like Bamford's voice.

“We're agoin' out tomorrow, sir—just 'eard—bit o' rest. That's it—just let me get me arm round these boots o' yours. That's it. Let's just 'ave yer arm over me shoulder. Out tomorrow, and the bullet ain't come yet. Now 'ere's yer dug-out and 'ere's the officer what sent me for yer—no you don't want to go that way, sir, towards the sap 'ead—turn
right the dead, turn left the livin'—that's it, sir—must have 'is joke, must Bamford.”

He looked across the now limp form to Robbie.

“Comes o' thinkin', sir. All in, 'e is. What's the use o' thinkin' in this 'ere war? Either we'll be cold mutton tomorrow, or we won't.”

Bamford was right. It is a mistake to go and stand in a trench alone at midnight, amid the stench of a thousand corpses, and listen to shells, and moans and think.