A Test to Destruction (13 page)

It was after midnight when the Field-Marshal wrote in his diary

After more than a hundred hours without sleep, Bill Kidd, now in command, felt himself to be separated from his body, a wonderful feeling. He seemed to be floating at times; only his legs kept him down. After all-day firing from the Railway Salient he had withdrawn under the direct fire from advancing Germans into an undulating area of old shell-holes tangled with sere grasses and rusty barbed-wire. His men needed to rest for half an hour every mile of retreating westwards under cover of darkness; he never rested himself. Almost savagely he drove himself to be better than his ‘real self', as seen through the eyes of others in the old days—when in a uniform of gold and silver
ric-rac
sewn all over a long-skirted ex-coachman's coat, and wearing an ex-bandmaster's peaked cap made splendid in the eyes of small boys by additions of more gold braid, Mr. Kidd had stood outside one of the lesser picture palaces of North London, chanting such names as Bill Hart, Theda Bara, Nazimova, Sessue Hayakawa, Charlie Chaplin and other heroes and heroines of the flicks.

With not always concealed scorn Bill Kidd made comments to his men on ‘Posh Percy', the men's nickname for the Divisional Commander, General O'Toole—whom Bill Kidd suspected of being bogus, like himself.

Plain eyeglass screwed into socket holding glass eye, shaven, wearing slacks with
polished
light brown shoes, sometimes the dapper figure of Jimmy O'Toole appeared out of nowhere while
long-range bullets passed tiredly overhead. Sometimes he offered cigarettes from a gold case to regimental officers; but red-tabs were, as before, of another world—of eggs-and-bacon with coffee for breakfast, and a bed to sleep in every night.

When strafing Fokkers appeared Bill Kidd cursed loudly the absent ‘Flying Corpse', not knowing that all scouts were patrolling east to bomb and rake a
feld-grau
road congestion, the counterpart of their own.

Smoke of dumps rose up by day; fires stained with pale rose the nights of endless lunar light veiled in mist until the coming of day revealed the column slouching onwards, to reach the ultimate stand upon the old front line of early 1916.

Bill Kidd could not rest; he had to see to everything. His life in daylight was a series of right angles that crumbled along a base and then down one side, as first they strung out from the road to fire from hasty positions at oncoming distant figures which disappeared, giving them time to scramble back to another temporary position until the cold red ball of the sun went down, when, with backs to the enemy, they trailed to the road, to limp away west, under the chiarascuro of the moon, with half an hour's rest for every mile covered, with always the blond stain to their left front, the silent remote rising of lights which marked the deep German penetrations down south towards Amiens.

“Come on, you crab wallahs, do an allez!” Many had to be kicked awake, goaded to their feet.

Phillip and his runner had been left in the charge of two
solda
ten,
one of whom had a pistol, which he kept pointed in their direction as they sat on the ground. The other soldier had his rifle and bayonet. The attack appeared to have gone forward; other prisoners appeared, with more guards, until several hundreds were gathered there, apparently a collecting post. All had the buttons cut off their trousers, after equipment had been shed. They were kept, without food, until the moon arose, then they were marched up the road, coming to a village with the name
Maurepas
on a white board visible in the moonlight, and British traffic boards with arrows pointing the way to
Bapaume,
Peronne,
and
Albert.

Towards the end of the night British shells began to drone down. 9.2 inch, shells burst in the ruins and hutments, and at once Phillip said to O'Gorman, “It looks as though our guns are pulling out, first popping off all their shells.” Just as he spoke a salvo fell about them, the guards flung themselves down with most of the prisoners, who kept down as more shells womped into the road.

“Now's our chance, follow me,” said Phillip, as he slithered down the ditch on hands and knees, followed by O'Gorman. Then creeping round a half standing wall they got up and ran away, to fling themselves into an old grassy shell-hole. The going was difficult, and hot with sweat they made for the road. There they took off their helmets, and taking direction from the dimming moon, made for lower ground, in what Phillip thought was the direction of the wood.

A fire was burning in the village behind them; they kept their backs to it, and walking on, sometimes falling over old twists of wire, came after about a mile to the railway, where they stopped and sat down, seeing the glaze of the last light-balls growing pale in the west. The battalion had either been cut off and annihilated or got away and was now somewhere beyond the line of lights wavering on the horizon. It was dangerous to expose themselves so they lay in a shell-hole and went to sleep, to awake into full daylight.

“We'll have to stay here, O'Gorman, until it's dark.”

“Very good, sorr.”

But Phillip was not content to lie still; he must explore. Crawling from old shell-hole to hole through wet draggling weeds and grasses, he stood up after a while, and seeing a dead
soldier went to look at the body, its face a brick red from bullets through throat and chest. Farther on were two more British dead, lying as though they had been running when shot. Turning over the bodies to get at the haversacks for food he saw where the line of a machine-gun burst had caught them below the shoulders. Going on, he came across the shattered wooden handle of a stick-bomb, with its white bead still on the string which had pulled the detonator. There, around a crater, lay other bodies, and a Lewis gun tilted off its pronged rest.

He picked it up, sat down to examine it, removing drum and working the cocking handle, forgetting to remove finger off trigger, so that a single round went off. This drew O'Gorman, who came crawling through the grass, “Are you all right, sorr?”

“Yes, and so is this louie gun! Collect those drums …”

With cigarettes, matches, water-bottles, and rations from the stiffies, they went back to their original shell-hole and set up the gun; and, not able to eat, dozed.

Phillip awoke with the smell of smoke in his nostrils. By the sun it was about 4 p.m. Looking out of the hole he saw that the grass was on fire to his left front. Gazing intently through the tunnel of his left hand he saw a line of dark figures working forward behind the smoke. And behind them, again, was a group of Germans man-handling what looked to be a small field-gun. It went out of sight, then reappeared, men turning the wheels by hand.

He woke up O'Gorman. The two watched together. When it was about 800 yards off he decided to open fire. It disappeared after twenty rounds, half a drum. They had two other drums; he decided to lie low. After a minute he looked through the grasses again; the gun was smaller, and only when a whizzbang wopped and spat a hundred yards or so in front did he realize that it was now pointing in their direction.

Another wop and spit, this time nearer. A third shell kicked up turf and a pencil of dirt beyond them. He fired another burst from the louie gun. A fourth shell made its vicious little upright jag and spit, forty yards short. It seemed so funny, almost a private war. He lay back laughing.

“Think of it, O'Gorman, they're shooting at
us
!”

“You're right, sorr!” replied the Irish boy, seriously.

“But don't you think it's
funny
?”

Whiz-bang
!
“Ha ha, fancy choosing
us,
out of the whole Fifth Army! Come on, give us another drum!”

The wheeled grasshopper disappeared. He sat and laughed until his ribs ached. “I believe we've hit it!”

“Yes, sorr,” replied O'Gorman, serious as ever.

Phillip felt suddenly exhausted. He lit a fag, one of the thin Indian cigarettes which had been issued lately, tasting as though made of old tea-leaves. It was bitter; he flung it away, and tried to sleep. “Keep a look-out, O'Gorman, I'm for a spot of shut-eye.”

“Very good, sorr.”

He floated through time with the blonde from Sweden, who at first was Lily. He tried to drag himself to her, she was viewless, he could not see her, he could not remember who she was, he must write to her, but who was she, he had not written to her to explain why he had not turned up, but where had it been, where, and when was it? His eyes opened to dull dragging failure, and though he knew then that he had been dreaming, yet who was it he had forgotten, and where had he met the nameless, beauteous one?

“They're comin' agen, sorr. With horses, sorr.”

He was in the same place as before.

“Horses?” Forcing himself to turn to get on his knees he saw the gun drawn by a team against the skyline galloping towards them. He depressed the louie sight to 600 yards, and holding the black tube steady on the rim of the shell-hole squeezed the trigger and held it back, while the horses reared and one went down, overturning the gun, which was dragged out of sight.

“Poor bloody horses.”

“Yes, sorr.”

Later, as they lay there, the crackling of rifle-fire broke from the north. Bullets buzzed over them, coming from behind.

“We're between the lines, I think. We'll have to wait until it's dark, then do an allez.”

“Yes, sorr.”

*

As the sun dropped to the west it became colder. They dozed, lying together for warmth, until dusk came, when they got up, stiff and weary, to face the trek to the river. The Somme, he told O'Gorman, was somewhere south of where they were.
That seemed to be the best way to get through, so they walked by the moon, allowing for its westerly drift.

The broad valley sloped gently down. Some time later they heard voices in front, and the rolling of wheels. Obviously this was German transport, since it was well east of the flare-line. When within fifty yards they hid, and taking a chance, went across in an interval between horse waggons. About a mile farther on there was another road, also in movement. They crossed again without being seen, and still making south, came to a third road, which passed through the ruins of a village. This area, Phillip whispered, had been fought over by the French in the Somme battles, for rusting Creusot shells lay about.

Avoiding the place, they turned west and picked their way in the timeless haze of the moon up and down and across the grassy wilderness of the crater-zone of 1916. No longer did Phillip care if they were challenged and taken prisoner again: the desire for sleep was such that often he fell over and did not know he had gone down until the moon was revolving over him.

O'Gorman sometimes stumbled, too. They held hands and through the daze of his mind Phillip determined to keep the youth from all harm, so trusting and simple was he, probably believing in him as he himself believed in Westy.

After one rest—they needed to sit down frequently—he said, “I'll bet you forty francs to a centime that we'll be back before dawn, O'Gorman me boy. And what's more, as an escaped prisoner of war, you'll be able to apply to go home. That's in General Routine Orders.”

“Yes, sorr?”

They were now above a great bend of the river, with its marshes below extending to an infinity of mist white under the moon; and in pauses of desultry gunfire and the occasional passing throb of Gothas on their way down the course of the river to bomb Amiens with its railway junction and yards at Longueau, they could hear the cries of waterfowl splashing below, and the whistle of a mallard drake's wings overhead. Dreamlike was the white night of water and the lily-lights of the armies; how strange it was that this was the greatest war ever known in the world, and he, Phillip Maddison, was part of it.