Pass Guard at Ypres (3 page)

The question might be excused. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the intermittent shelling behind them became continuous. A new fire had started in Ypres, and flames sprang up in the distance beyond the trees, to throw the skeletons of spires and ruined buildings into darker relief and cast a more livid glow upon the rolling curtain of smoke. “Usual evening hate, I suppose,” muttered Captain Corra. “Bit late. Well, it's nothing to do with us. We'll shove along.” While the leading platoons were filing man by man from the road, and before it was his turn to move, Freddy Mann watched, half fascinated. So this was to Captain Corra almost an ordinary hate, almost a routine matter.
He hadn't spoken as if to show off, but in an indifferent manner as if he meant it. It probably was a matter of routine to him. Probably it was usual when a battle was going on, but, as Freddy Mann looked about him, the air seemed full of flying steel that he almost imagined that one could see, the crimson sky one sounding board of roaring and crashing thunder. There in Ypres, before it and behind it, flash succeeded flash as the German shells rained down, while lesser stabs appeared from just behind them as the British opened in retaliation. The range of the German shelling was becoming wider: one shell fell in the field to their left, two hundred yards away. They were followed by others, and when at last Freddy Mann moved off it was to the accompaniment, as it appeared to him, of a rising crescendo of flame and fire.

“Livened up a bit,” remarked Private Walley, who had joined his platoon unnoticed. “Don't mind if I stroll along with you, sir? The officer has gone up ahead.”

“No, please do. Do they often go on like this?”

“Bless you, yes, this ain't nothing. Gets on to Yeeper regular, does the 'Un. Loves it something beautiful. Flies round a 'oney pot ain't in it with the 'Un. Two or three times a day we gets this, Sundays
and
Bank 'Olidays included. Mind yer step 'ere, sir: 'e's a dead 'un, 'e won't move. Don't worry us, that crumping,” he pointed over his shoulder to the flames and roar. “Only difficulty is when they starts spreading round like, gets on our front as well. Anything'll start it—bit 'o trench bombing, one of three rounds a day o' our shrapnel, anything of the sort: then away they'll go, on
to Yeeper, Brielen, Vlamertinghe, Dickebusch, Kruistraat, Pop itself like as not. Steady 'ere a bit, sir; well, let 'em come up. Can't depend on orders getting down, not with this 'ere bloody row, and we're getting near. Ah, thought so,” in rather sobered accents, as he went ahead of Freddy Mann down a shallow C.T. which faced due east. “They've got round into us, the swine. 'Otted up the front; pity, that. Nicer to have got in quiet; we'll just 'ave to go canny. Them damned machine guns, they're at it now.”

It appeared impossible to Freddy Mann that there was anything not at it: bullets passed over their heads in a steady stream, or phutted monotonously against the sandbags on the left: the fields ahead of them were lit with Verey lights and flashes, in which odd groups of men, stakes, stumps of trees, and long lines of sandbags showed gaunt for a moment and then were swallowed into a deeper darkness: men groped past or across, laden with duckboards, ration bags, spades, shovels or rolls of wire, cursing softly, feeling their way along the line. Delays seemed interminable, during which there was nothing to do but keep well down to the side of the trench, and hope that all was O.K. behind them and in front.

“Yes, 'e's nasty tonight, is the bloody 'Un. Careful 'ere now, sir: we've got to double this bit, and there's a fixed rifle laid. One at a time, that's it, like them in front: just five yards across this 'ere road, then into that trench and there yer are: just let 'em get across and—ah!”—the dark form in front, just emerged from the trench, gave two steps forward and fell headlong across the parapet. “Got 'im, that 'as,” as
Private Walley and Freddy Mann went forward. “Straight through the 'ead, that's got 'im. No, 'tain't no use, sir, 'e's a gonner 'e is—”

“What is it, Bamford?” as Freddy Mann turned from the lifeless body to the burly form that had pressed up along the trench.

“All right, sir—just come to tell yer that—'ullo, Gawd's truth, that ain't Sergeant Arris gone?”

Freddy Mann nodded. “First blood to them—that's Harris.”

“What 'appened, sir?”

“Sniped, just here at the culvert a moment ago: he was just in front.”

Freddy Mann dropped on his knees beside the dying man.

“Quick, Bamford—water—quick. He's—”

The head dropped back.

“No use, sir.”

“No use?”

Two pairs of eyes met in the darkness, shining in the sudden glare of an exploding shell.

“No use: it 'ad 'is number.” Private Bamford spoke as with the voice of a grim and changeless doom.

If, as Colonel Steyne, of the 1st Battalion of Loyal Southshires, wisely
concluded, you are entrusted with a battalion of inexperienced soldiers and ordered
to break them in to it, and accustom them to active service and conditions of trench
warfare, it is an excellent idea to get them on to burying. A job like this prevents
them from hanging about and crowding the front line trenches; it teaches them to
move about a bit in the open and get to know the lie of the land, to keep their eyes
skinned for snipers without being told, and to learn above all what a bit of cold
mutton looks like and thus to get rid of any squeamish nonsense. There were plenty
of dead round Sanctuary Wood and behind Witteport Farm, especially after that last
show with the Liverpools, and Colonel Steyne and his brother officer, the C.O. of
the Kitchener battalion, agreed that the best thing they could do would be to get on
with it and help to clean things up.

Within forty-eight hours, therefore, of their arrival in the Railway Wood sector, “C” Company found themselves well equipped with lime, spades and pickaxes, making their way trenches filled with semi-somnolent or cursing members of their sister battalion and out into the low
fields immediately behind the ridge along which the front line ran. There was plenty to do, and the sooner they got on with it the better, as it was a hot day and the corpses stank; there seemed to be about eighty in Freddy Mann's sector alone, some lying separately, some in little groups of three or four, one or two mere skeletons covered with ragged bits of uniform, but most of them in the state of decomposition that one would expect after a month's exposure. Rather pleased at having something to do which, however indirectly, might be considered as helping to win the war, Freddy Mann, after walking round his allotted area with Sergeant Mitchell and Corporal Sugger, who ducked incessantly, talked about South Africa and moved stealthily towards the trenches whenever he could, got his platoon going and found sufficient occupation in siting graves and advising as to the methods and processes of interment. His assistance was in some demand, for there is a peculiar technique attaching to the burying of semi-decomposed bodies under active service conditions, and each case has to be treated, as it were, upon its merits. The chief difficulty arises in regard to the moving of the body to the grave, when dug. Even if it is in one piece when found—and this cannot be assumed—no small degree of skill is often required to preserve its entirety during the process of transfer. A too sudden pull at a boot, and a leg may come off in your hand, as the angry flies rise up around your face. A careful balancing of trunk and limbs upon two spades is sometimes effective, but there is always even then the chance that the head
may drop off and roll along, a grisly mass of clotted hair, blackened flesh, maggots, protruding bones and teeth, to come to rest before your feet. Nor does the solution of these problems overcome all difficulties: there remains that question of those little groups, sometimes of three or four, sometimes of two alone, which must either be buried together in an almost shapeless heap, or separated by tearing limb from limb, hand from windpipe, sorted out into what is British and what is German by what signs are still available and laid in pieces, one by one, in due order in separate graves. The thoroughly conscientious member of a burial party will adopt this method, but it takes time, and when the corpses are more closely intertwined and a shell or two has fallen near, there is a temptation to adopt the simpler course. This, for example, was a case in point. Freddy Mann stood for a moment regarding the two bodies which Corporal Garside had asked him to inspect. Thigh to thigh and breast to breast they pressed against each other: behind the neck of one a bayonet stuck out a clear six inches, and the ribs of the other were pierced by the rifle which its owner had pressed downwards with redoubled force when making his headlong plunge. Which, in that welter of maggots and buzzing flies, was the flesh of the Englishman's hand and of the German's throat? Whose were those crooked fingers, lying apparently by themselves beside the pouch? Where was the Englishman's left arm? Come to that, where was the upper part of the German's head? It had to be gone into, and it was not exactly a pleasant job. He felt
almost inclined to think, as he bent down, that he'd had about enough of this for one afternoon: the stink seemed if anything to be worse in the clearer evening air. There they lay, gazing at him, those two bloody fools who'd run upon each other's bayonets and expected him to bury them, and they wanted a grave each, he supposed, but what the devil did it matter if . . .

“Hullo! Still at it?”

Freddy Mann looked up and saw by him an officer of middle height, about twenty-five years of age, dark, with stern and clear-cut features, but with a cheerful enough expression. He was standing in a negligent attitude, toying with his pistol and watching the proceedings with an apparently amused interest.

“Hullo—er—”

“Harvey—you know Harvey—that's me—met you at B.H.Q. last night. First Battalion—God's own. How's things?”

“Yes—er—I remember.” Freddy Mann straightened himself and paused a moment. “Is there—?”

“No.” George Harvey anticipated the question. “Nothing I want. Just strolled out to see how things were going. Nothing to do for an hour or so. Going on patrol tonight, so I thought I'd just stretch my legs. Pleasant job.”

He looked round.

“Got some of 'em cleared up, anyway. Good thing, that. We wanted 'em out of the way. Bit of a set-to, these two seem to have had.” He nodded his head indifferently towards the rotting and twisted corpses. “Got each other
fair, they did. May 25th show, that was. Bols' crowd. Fusiliers. Most of 'em got scuppered then. Don't wonder. Of all the bloody awful shows. What yer going to do with them?”

“Just wondering, matter of fact. Toler says bury them separately when possible, but—”

“Shove 'em in together, if I were you. ‘In death they were not divided,' you know. Make it up between 'em, they will, when they're pushing daisies. Yes, poor swine, they got their packet. Wonder we didn't, all of us.”

“Were you there?”

George Harvey nodded.

“In with Bols, our crowd. Came up from Flammers in the afternoon, and struck it fair. Shoved off at 12, left our dinners on the boil, got along God knows how to G.H.Q. line—you know—that bit along by Hell Fire Corner—got tied up in the wire there waiting for the Suffolks, then pushed up to Witteport and waited for the 80th. 80th came along about midnight, bless their hearts, dropping fellows all the way: 500 odd they dropped that day. However, they got here, cursing like mad, and we all got settled in, linked up with the Cavalry in Zouave Wood, dug in all nice and comfortable and happy, and here we are. Devil of a show that was: close call, if ever there was one: sort of thing we're always having here. Damned thankful, this city ought to be to us. When I think of what I've done for Wipers—”

He waved a hand toward the towers of Ypres, now tinged with the setting sun.

It was difficult, Freddy Mann thought, to know how far to take him seriously. He spoke always with that slightly cynical smile, but rather grim expression.

“You've seen a good deal here then?”

“Most of it, old son. Here or hereabouts, on or off all the time since October. Good shooting season, if ever there was one. All the time just hanging on. And we were told when we got here we were going through to Menin.”

He laughed, as he squatted on a little hillock on the ground.

“That feller”—he pointed to a skeleton—“he probably thought he was going through to Menin. He was one of October's lot by the look of him. But most of 'em learnt their mistake over there—round there by Gheluvelt and Polygon Wood. That's where they learnt, October 31st. We were practically done that day. The Worcesters, they were all that saved us. Lanax himself thought we were done. God knows how we hung on.”

“What was it like?” The question, Freddy Mann knew, was a schoolboy question, doubly ridiculous when asked as now, within a few hundred yards from the German lines. But it was peaceful now in comparison. Harvey had seen the flames of war.

“What was it like? Like—oh, hell—you'll know one day, soon enough probably—like anything else in this blasted war. No reserves—that was what was the matter there. Brigadiers in shell holes, just behind the line. Cooks in the firing line. Horses' heads flying all over the place and no guns or shells; you know—the ordinary sort of thing—what
it always is like—been like ever since. Just the same last month, with gas thrown in. And we've lost a lot of ground since then. Decent city, Wipers was, in those merry days; drinks about and things. Damned poor place now.”

“Why do we keep it?—that's what I can't understand. This Salient—”

“You aren't the first to ask that, old son,” said George Harvey cheerfully. “And I don't suppose you'll be the last. Some say it's to keep the Belgians in, some say because G.H.Q. don't know we're here, or it's the only place they've got maps of. All I know is we do, and it's damned well time you fellers came out to help us.”

“Wasn't our fault we didn't come before.”

“No, and I'll believe that.” George Harvey got up and placed his hand on Freddy Mann's shoulder with a kindly smile. “And you're young enough now, seems to me, some of you. How old are you?”

“Nineteen. Left school last July.”

“Mm.” George Harvey grunted. “Bit of a change to this. You—” He looked warmly at Freddy Mann, then stopped. “Good chaps, your chaps, what I've seen of them. Harry, he's one of the best. And Robbie, that's a chap I like. Doesn't talk. That's the sort.”

He looked towards Robinson, quietly supervising and helping his burial party in the adjacent field.

“Glad you've come, you know. It's bucked our fellows up, all this ‘K.1' business. Suppose you've come out to do the trick.”

“Well, anyway, to win the war.”

George Harvey nodded, but the smile was hardly visible this time. He looked towards Ypres, and Freddy Mann followed his gaze.

“That's all we've done so far, save Ypres. We talked like that, last year. September 10th I crossed. But that's all we've done so far. Nine months—that's all there is to show.”

He paused. The twilight was coming on, and the stumps of trees and towers were beginning to get indistinct in the distance. An occasional early starlight rose and fell.

“Damned big, you know, this war. In England you see it as a whole. Here it's only little bits. This bit, for example, that's all I know. And all these fellows,” he pointed to the unburied dead, and the graves of those just buried. “All they'll ever know. Stands for a lot does Ypres. Devil of a lot to the Southshires, anyway. He hasn't got it yet, the Hun, and he's tried damned hard. This job, for example—it was touch and go.”

He pointed to where the German bullet-proof shelters faced Ypres on the reverse side of the trench near where they were standing.

“See that?”

Freddy Mann nodded.

“You know what that means?”

“Yes.”

“Damned near, I tell you. Just those fields, then there's Ypres. And the Boche was in this trench.”

He looked again at the huddled mass at their feet, for which Corporal Garside and his men were digging their common grave.

“He was hanging on, that feller. Straight through the throat he got him. Never a dog's chance, either of 'em. Well, anyway, he didn't win the war, but he was doing something hanging on.”

The night was falling. Nights at Ypres were ghostly.

“Better pack up now and get along. I've got to shove off to this patrol. Bit chippy now. Come and have a tot to keep the cold out. May come again tonight, the Hun, for all I know. But it's safe so far, is Wipers. It's a rum place, Ypres. Come on!”

He moved a few steps, laughed a trifle nervously, and nodded to the corpses.

“Come on. Those fellers'll stay on guard.”