II Shell Out!
I
This, according to our latest subaltern from home, is the title of a revue which is running in Town; but that is a mere coincidence. The entertainment to which I am now referring took place in Flanders, and the leading parts were assigned to distinguished members of “K (1).”
The scene was the Château de Grandbois, or some other kind of Bois; possibly Vert. Not that we called it that: we invariably referred to it afterwards as Hush Hall, for reasons which will be set forth in due course.
One morning, while sojourning in what Olympus humorously calls a rest-camp,—a collection of antiquated wigwams half submerged in a mud-flat,—we received the intelligence that we were to extricate ourselves forthwith, and take over a fresh sector of trenches. The news was doubly unwelcome, because, in the first place, it is always unpleasant to face the prospect of trenches of any kind; and secondly, to take over strange trenches in the dead of a winter night is an experience which borders upon nightmare—the hot-lobster-and-toasted-cheese variety.
The opening stages of this enterprise are almost ritualistic in their formality. First of all, the Brigade Staff which is coming in visits the Headquarters of the Brigade which is going out—usually a château or farm somewhere in rear of the trenches—and makes the preliminary arrangements. After that the Commanding Officers and Company Commanders of the incoming battalions visit their own particular section of the line. They are shown over the premises by the outgoing tenants, who make little or no attempt to conceal their satisfaction at the expiration of their lease. The Colonels and the Captains then return to camp, with depressing tales of crumbling parapets, noisome dug-outs, and positions open to enfilade.
On the day of the relief various advance parties go up, keeping under the lee of hedges and embankments, and marching in single file. (At least, that is what they are supposed to do. If not ruthlessly shepherded, they will advance in fours along the skyline.) Having arrived, they take over such positions as can be relieved by daylight in comparative safety. They also take over trench-stores, and exchange trench-gossip. The latter is a fearsome and uncanny thing. It usually begins life at the “refilling point,” where the A.S.C. motor-lorries dump down next day’s rations, and the regimental transport picks them up.
An A.S.C. Sergeant mentions casually to a regimental Quartermaster that he has heard it said at the Supply Dépôt that heavy firing has been going on in the Channel. The Quartermaster, on returning to the Transport Lines, observes to his Quartermaster-Sergeant that the German Fleet has come out at last. The Quartermaster-Sergeant, when he meets the ration parties behind the lines that night, announces to a platoon Sergeant that we have won a great naval victory. The platoon Sergeant, who is suffering from trench feet and is a constant reader of a certain pessimistic halfpenny journal, replies gloomily: “We’ll have had heavy losses oorselves, too, I doot!” This observation is overheard by various members of the ration party. By midnight several hundred yards of the firing-line know for a fact that there has been a naval disaster of the first magnitude off the coast of a place which every one calls Gally Polly, and that the whole of our Division are to be transferred forthwith to the Near East to stem the tide of calamity.
Still, we must have something to chat about.
Meanwhile Brigade Majors and Adjutants, holding a stumpy pencil in one hand and a burning brow in the other, are composing Operation Orders which shall effect the relief, without—
(1) Leaving some detail—the bombers, or the snipers, or the sock-driers, or the pea-soup experts—unrelieved altogether.
(2) Causing relievers and relieved to meet violently together in some constricted fairway.
(3) Trespassing into some other Brigade Area. (This is far more foolhardy than to wander into the German lines.)
(4) Getting shelled.
Pitfall Number One is avoided by keeping a permanent and handy list of “all the people who do funny things on their own” (as the vulgar throng call the “specialists”), and checking it carefully before issuing Orders.
Number Two is dealt with by issuing a strict time-table, which might possibly be adhered to by a well-drilled flock of archangels, in broad daylight, upon good roads, and under peace conditions.
Number Three is provided for by copious and complicated map references.
Number Four is left to Providence—and is usually the best-conducted feature of the excursion.
Under cover of night the Battalion sets out, in comparatively small parties. They form a strange procession. The men wear their trench-costume—thigh-boots (which do not go well with a kilt), variegated coats of skins, and woollen nightcaps. Stuffed under their belts and through their packs they carry newspapers, broken staves for firewood, parcels from home, and sandbags loaded with mysterious comforts. A dilapidated parrot and a few goats are all that is required to complete the picture of Robinson Crusoe changing camp.
Progress is not easy. It is a pitch-black night. By day, this road (and all the countryside) is a wilderness: nothing more innocent ever presented itself to the eye of an inquisitive aeroplane. But after nightfall it is packed with troops and transport, and not a light is shown. If you can imagine what the Mansion House crossing would be like if called upon to sustain its midday traffic at midnight—the Mansion House crossing entirely unilluminated, paved with twelve inches of liquid mud, intersected by narrow strips of pavé, and liberally pitted with “crump-holes”—you may derive some faint idea of the state of things at a busy road-junction lying behind the trenches.
Until reaching what is facetiously termed “the shell area”—as if any spot in this benighted district were not a shell area—the troops plod along in fours at the right of the road. If they can achieve two miles an hour, they do well. At any moment they may be called upon to halt, and crowd into the roadside, while a transport-train passes carrying rations, and coke, and what is called “R.E. material”—this may be anything from a bag of nails to steel girders nine feet long—up to the firing-line. When this procession, consisting of a dozen limbered waggons, drawn by four mules and headed by a profane person on horseback—the Transport Officer—has rumbled past, the Company, which has been standing respectfully in the ditch, enjoying a refreshing shower-bath of mud and hoping that none of the steel girders are projecting from the limber more than a yard or two, sets out once more upon its way—only to take hasty cover again as sounds of fresh and more animated traffic are heard approaching from the opposite direction. There is no mistaking the nature of this cavalcade: the long vista of glowing cigarette-ends tells an unmistakable tale. These are artillery waggons, returning empty from replenishing the batteries; scattering homely jests like hail, and proceeding, wherever possible, at a hand-gallop. He is a cheery soul, the R.A. driver, but his interpretation of the rules of the road requires drastic revision.
Sometimes an axle breaks, or a waggon side-slips off the pavé into the morass reserved for infantry, and overturns. The result is a block, which promptly extends forward and back for a couple of miles. A peculiarly British chorus of inquiry and remonstrance—a blend of biting sarcasm and blasphemous humour—surges up and down the line; until plunging mules are unyoked, and the offending vehicle man-handled out of sight into the inky blackness by the roadside; or, in extreme cases, is annihilated with axes. Everything has to make way for a ration train. To crown all, it is more than likely that the calmness and smooth working of the proceedings will be assisted by a burst of shrapnel overhead. It is a most amazing scrimmage altogether. One of those members of His Majesty’s Opposition who are doing so much at present to save our country from destruction, by kindly pointing out the mistakes of the British Government and the British Army, would refer to the whole scene as a pandemonium of mismanagement and ineptitude. And yet, though the scene is enacted night after night without a break, there is hardly a case on record of the transport being surprised upon these roads by the coming of daylight, and none whatever of the rations and ammunition failing to get through.
It is difficult to imagine that Brother Boche, who on the other side of that ring of star-shells is conducting a precisely similar undertaking, is able, with all his perfect organisation and cast-iron methods, to achieve a result in any way superior to that which Thomas Atkins reaches by rule of thumb and sheer force of character.
At length the draggled Company worms its way through the press to the fringe of the shell-area, beyond which no transport may pass. The distance of this point from the trenches varies considerably, and depends largely upon the caprice of the Boche. On this occasion, however, we still have a mile or two to go—across country now, in single file, at the heels of a guide from the battalion which we are relieving.
Guides may be divided into two classes—
(1) Guides who do not know the way, and say so at the outset.
(2) Guides who do not know the way, but leave it to you to discover the fact.
There are no other kinds of guides.
The pace is down to a mile an hour now, except in the case of men in the tail of the line, who are running rapidly. It is a curious but quite inexplicable fact that if you set a hundred men to march in single file in the dark, though the leading man may be crawling like a tortoise, the last man is compelled to proceed at a profane double if he is to avoid being left behind and lost.
Still, everybody gets there somehow, and in due course the various
Company Commanders are enabled to telephone to their respective
Battalion Headquarters the information that the Relief is completed.
For this relief, much thanks!
After that the outgoing Battalion files slowly out, and the newcomers are left gloomily contemplating their new abiding-place, and observing—
“I wonder if there is any Division in the whole blessed Expeditionary Force, besides ours, which ever does a single damn thing to keep its trenches in repair!”
II
All of which brings us back to Hush Hall, where the Headquarters of the outgoing Brigade are handing over to their successors.
Hush Hall, or the Château de Quelquechose, is a modern country house, and once stood up white and gleaming in all its brave finery of stucco, conservatories, and ornamental lake, amid a pleasant wood not far from a main road. It is such a house as you might find round about Guildford or Hindhead. There are many in this fair countryside, but few are inhabited now, and none by their rightful owners. They are all marked on the map, and the Boche gunners are assiduous map-readers. Hush Hall has got off comparatively lightly. It is still habitable, and well furnished. The roof is demolished upon the side most exposed to the enemy, and many of the trees in the surrounding wood are broken and splintered by shrapnel. Still, provided the weather remains passable, one can live there. Upon the danger-side the windows are closed and shuttered. Weeds grow apace in the garden. No smoke emerges from the chimneys. (If it does, the Mess Corporal hears about it from the Staff Captain.) A few strands of barbed wire obstruct the passage of those careless or adventurous persons who may desire to explore the forbidden side of the house. The front door is bolted and barred: visitors, after approaching stealthily along the lee of a hedge, like travellers of dubious bona fides on a Sunday afternoon, enter unobtrusively by the back door, which is situated on the blind side of the château. Their path thereto is beset by imploring notices like the following:—
The Slightest Movement Draws Shell Fire. Keep Close to the Hedge
A later hand has added the following moving postscript:—
We Live Here. You Don’t!
It was the Staff Captain who was responsible for the rechristening of the establishment.
“What sort of place is this new palace we are going to doss in?” inquired the Machine-Gun Officer, when the Staff Captain returned from his preliminary visit.
The Staff Captain, who was a man of a few words, replied—
“It’s the sort of shanty where everybody goes about in felt slippers, saying ‘Hush!’”
Brigade Headquarters—this means the Brigadier, the Brigade Major, the Staff Captain, the Machine-Gun Officer, the Signal Officer, mayhap a Padre and a Liaison Officer, accompanied by a mixed multitude of clerks, telegraphists, and scullions—arrived safely at their new quarters under cover of night, and were hospitably received by the outgoing tenants, who had finished their evening meal and were girded up for departure. In fact, the Machine-Gun Officer, Liaison Officer, and Padre had already gone, leaving their seniors to hold the fort till the last. The Signal Officer was down in the cellar, handing over ohms, ampères, short-circuits, and other mysterious trench-stores to his “opposite number.”
Upon these occasions there is usually a good deal of time to fill in between the arrival of the new brooms and the departure of the old. This period of waiting may be likened to that somewhat anxious interval with which frequenters of race-courses are familiar, between the finish of the race and the announcement of the “All Right!” The outgoing Headquarters are waiting for the magic words—“Relief Complete!” Until that message comes over the buzzer, the period of tension endures. The main point of difference is that the gentleman who has staked his fortune on the legs of a horse has only to wait a few minutes for the confirmation of his hopes; while a Brigadier, whose bedtime (or even breakfast-time) is at the mercy of an errant platoon, may have to sit up all night.
“Sit down and make yourselves comfortable,” said A Brigade to X Brigade.
X Brigade complied, and having been furnished with refreshment, led off with the inevitable question—
“Does one—er—get shelled much here?”
There was a reassuring coo from A Brigade.
“Oh, no. This is a very healthy spot. One has to be careful, of course. No movement, or fires, or anything of that kind. A sentry or two, to warn people against approaching over the open by day, and you’ll be as cooshie as anything!” (“Cooshie” is the latest word here. That and “crump.”)
“I ought to warn you of one thing,” said the Brigadier. “Owing to the surrounding woods, sound is most deceptive here. You will hear shell-bursts which appear quite close, when in reality they are quite a distance away. That, for instance!”—as a shell exploded apparently just outside the window. “That little fellow is a couple of hundred yards away, in the corner of the wood. The Boche has been groping about there for a battery for the last two days.”
“Is the battery there?” inquired a voice.
“No; it is farther east. But there is a Gunner’s Mess about two hundred yards from here, in that house which you passed on the way up.”
“Oh!” observed X Brigade.
Gunners are peculiar people. When professionally engaged, no men could be more retiring. They screen their operations from the public gaze with the utmost severity, shrouding batteries in screens of foliage and other rustic disguises. If a layman strays anywhere near one of these arboreal retreats, a gunner thrusts out a visage enflamed with righteous wrath, and curses him for giving the position away. But in his hours of relaxation the gunner is a different being. He billets himself in a house with plenty of windows: he illuminates all these by night, and hangs washing therefrom by day. When inclined for exercise, he goes for a promenade across an open space labelled—“Not to be used by troops by daylight.” Therefore, despite his technical excellence and superb courage, he is an uncomfortable neighbour for establishments like Hush Hall.
In this respect he offers a curious contrast to the Sapper. Off duty, the Sapper is the most unobtrusive of men—a cave-man, in fact. He burrows deep into the earth, or the side of a hill, and having secured the roof of this cavern against direct hits by ingenious contrivances of his own manufacture, constructs a suite of furniture of a solid and enduring pattern, and lives the life of a comfortable recluse. But when engaged in the pursuit of his calling, the Sapper is the least retiring of men. The immemorial tradition of the great Corps to which he belongs has ordained that no fire, however fierce, must be allowed to interfere with a Sapper in the execution of his duty. This rule is usually interpreted by the Sapper to mean that you must not perform your allotted task under cover when it is possible to do so under fire. To this is added, as a rider, that in the absence of an adequate supply of fire, you must draw fire. So the Sapper walks cheerfully about on the tops of parapets, hugging large and conspicuous pieces of timber, or clashing together sheets of corrugated iron, as happy as a king.
“You will find this house quite snug,” continued the Brigadier. “The eastern suite is to be avoided, because there is no roof there; and if it rains outside for a day, it rains in the best bedroom for a week. There is a big kitchen in the basement, with a capital range. That’s all, I think. The chief thing to avoid is movement of any kind. The leaves are coming off the trees now—”
At this moment an orderly entered the room with a pink telegraph message.
“Relief complete, sir!” announced the Brigade Major, reading it.
“Good work!” replied both Brigadiers, looking at their watches simultaneously, “considering the state of the country.” The Brigadier of “A” rose to his feet.
“Now we can pass along quietly,” he said. “Good luck to you. By the way, take care of Edgar, won’t you? Any little attention which you can show him will be greatly appreciated.”
“Who is Edgar?”
“Oh, I thought the Staff Captain would have told you. Edgar is the swan—the last of his race, I’m afraid, so far as this place is concerned. He lives on the lake, and usually comes ashore to draw his rations about lunch-time. He is inclined to be stand-offish on one side, as he has only one eye; but he is most affable on the other. Well, now to find our horses!”
As the three officers departed down the backdoor steps, a hesitating voice followed them—“H’m! Is there any place where one can go—a cellar, or any old spot of that kind—just in case we are—”
“Bless you, you’ll be all right!” was the cheery reply. (The outgoing Brigade is always excessively cheery.) “But there are dug-outs over there—in the garden. They haven’t been occupied for some months, so you may find them a bit ratty. You won’t require them, though. Good-night!”
III
Whizz! Boom! Bang! Crash! Wump!
“It’s just as well,” mused the Brigade Major, turning in his sleep about three o’clock the following morning, “that they warned us about the deceptive sound of the shelling here. One would almost imagine that it was quite close…. That last one was heavy stuff: it shook the whole place!… This is a topping mattress: it would be rotten having to take to the woods again after getting into really cooshie quarters at last…. There they go again!” as a renewed tempest of shells rent the silence of night. “That old battery must be getting it in the neck!… Hallo, I could have sworn something hit the roof that time! A loose slate, I expect! Anyhow …”
The Brigade Major, who had had a very long day, turned over and went to sleep again.
IV
The next morning, a Sunday, broke bright and clear. Contrary to his usual habit, the Brigade Major took a stroll in the garden before breakfast. The first object which caught his eye, as he came down the back-door steps, was the figure of the Staff Captain, brooding pensively over a large crater, close to the hedge. The Brigade Major joined him.
“I wonder if that was there yesterday!” he observed, referring to the crater.
“Couldn’t have been,” growled the Staff Captain. “We walked to the house along this very hedge. No craters then!”
“True!” agreed the Brigade Major amiably. He turned and surveyed the garden. “That lawn looks a bit of a golf course. What lovely bunkers!”
“They appear to be quite new, too,” remarked the Staff Captain thoughtfully. “Come to breakfast!”
On their way back they found the Brigadier, the Machine-Gun Officer, and the Padre, gazing silently upward.
“I wonder when that corner of the house got knocked off,” the M.G.O. was observing.
“Fairly recently, I should say,” replied the Brigadier.
“Those marks beside your bedroom window, sir,—they look pretty fresh!” interpolated the Padre, a sincere but somewhat tactless Christian.
Brigade Headquarters regarded one another with dubious smiles.
“I wonder,” began a tentative voice, “if those fellows last night were indulging in a leg-pull—what is called in this country a lire-jambe—when they assured us—”
Whoo-Oo-Oo-Oo-Ump!
A shell came shrieking over the tree-tops, and fell with a tremendous splash into the geometrical centre of the lake, fifty yards away.
For the next two hours, shrapnel, “whizz-bangs,” “Silent Susies,” and other explosive wildfowl raged round the walls of Hush Hall. The inhabitants thereof, some twenty persons in all, were gathered in various apartments on the lee side.
“It is still possible,” remarked the Brigadier, lighting his pipe, “that they are not aiming at us. However, it is just as inconvenient to be buried by accident as by design. As soon as the first direct hit is registered upon this imposing fabric, we will retire to the dug-outs. Send word to the kitchen that every one is to be ready to clear out of the house when necessary.”
Next moment there came a resounding crash, easily audible above the tornado raging in the garden, followed by the sound of splintering glass. Hush Hall rocked. The Mess waiter appeared.
“A shell has just came in through the dining-room window, sirr,” he informed the Mess President, “and broke three of they new cups!”
“How tiresome!” said the Brigadier. “Dug-outs, everybody!”
V
There were no casualties, which was rather miraculous. Late in the afternoon Brigade Headquarters ventured upon another stroll in the garden. The tumult had ceased, and the setting Sabbath sun glowed peacefully upon the battered countenance of Hush Hall. The damage was not very extensive, for the house was stoutly built. Still, two bedrooms, recently occupied, were a wreck of broken glass and splintered plaster, while the gravel outside was littered with lead sheeting and twisted chimney-cans. The shell which had aroused the indignation of the Mess waiter by entering the dining-room window, had in reality hit the ground directly beneath it. Six feet higher, and the Brigadier’s order to clear the house would have been entirely superfluous.
The Brigade Major and the Staff Captain surveyed the unruffled surface of the lake—a haunt of ancient peace in the rays of the setting sun. Upon the bosom thereof floated a single, majestic, one-eyed swan, performing intricate toilet exercises. It was Edgar.
“He must have a darned good dug-out somewhere!” observed the Brigade Major enviously.