A Test to Destruction (21 page)

“Trust me, sir.”

After the tunnellers came a Motor Machine-gun Battery in sidecars attached to motor-cycles. The major explained that they were Corps troops, sent up because Wytschaete was to be ‘held at all costs’. He had seen the Brigadier, and had his orders to find and prepare his own sites in the village. “It means we act more or less independently, sir, on movement orders from Major Montgomery, G.S.O. 2 at Corps. ‘Puttying up’, as they say.”

Phillip showed him the company positions on the map. “We’ve got a ‘mad major’ called Kidd in the Staenyzer Kabaret, at the junction of the two roads, just there. He’s liable to do anything, even rush out with bayonet men to meet the attacking Germans, so don’t scupper him by mistake. Have some coffee?”

“No, thank you, if you’ll excuse me. We must get cracking. I’ll get my guns up in position, and then send the sidecars back here, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Righty ho. Good luck!”

They rushed bumping over the rubble tracks; the sidecars returning just before red and green rockets began to rise above the dust and smoke of the German bombardment. British shells were soon screaming past, overlaying the massive hammering of the Vickers guns. Phillip waited until the racket died down, and then went up, after hearing by telephone from two companies that the attack had collapsed two hundred yards short of the line. On the way he met Bill Kidd coming down with a dozen prisoners, and a lance-corporal with fixed bayonet. What had his eccentric No. 2 decided to do now?

“Hullo, you Boche-eater? Going to supervise the cooking of your next meal?”

“These lads are prächtige kerls, old boy. They’ve got guts, they came right up to the Kabaret, where they chucked their last phosphorus bombs, then began to help their wounded pals. Good lads. Bill Kidd’s not handing them over to the slops until they’ve had their shackles. I’ve ordered my boys, by the way, to help with their wounded, under the Sky Pilot.” This was the nickname of the Brigade padre, who had put up the M.C. riband in addition to his M.M.

“Well done, Bill.”

“Thank you, sir!” To this unexpected reply was added a salute, the act being copied an instant later by the prisoners pulling off their forage caps and springing to attention. Phillip responded as punctiliously, and returning to headquarters with Kidd wondered how he could have got on without him.

“I’ll take these lads down with me to Byron Farm, old boy. Just to have a look-see. I’ve left Hedges in the Kabaret, to carry on.”

“I see. You’ll be needed at Byron Farm, Bill.”

Bill Kidd however, if he had had any intention of remaining with the cadre, did not stop away from the line for long. He heard of a pair of limber wheelers killed the night before, and returned to ask Naylor to find him a butcher.

“At once, or sooner, old boy. There’s hundreds of steaks on those horses. Both were bled out slowly, real kosher meat.”

Naylor telephoned Tabor, many men of whose company had been butchers in civil life, apparently. One was told to report immediately to the Saschenfeste.

While Kidd was impatiently waiting for the butcher, the battery of Motor Machine-guns was still in Wytschaete. The
sidecars were parked near headquarters, the guns being east of the church, a hundred yards or so from the Messines road. When the butcher arrived, Kidd, learning that the man could drive, took two of the sidecar outfits, driving one himself while the butcher drove the other down to Byron Farm.

An hour later they had not returned. Meanwhile the major commanding the battery had come angrily into battalion H.Q.

“I’ll have you know that we are Corps troops!” he said angrily. “We’ve been ordered to go to Hill 63. Here’s my authority.” When Phillip had read it, the major went on, “I’ll have to leave two of my guns, with their number ones and drivers, behind. This may be of interest to you, in the circumstances.” He held out another piece of paper. “As you can see, it’s a special order signed by Major Bernard Montgomery, G.S.O. 2 at Corps, saying that we are on no account to be considered as other than under Corps orders. You may care to explain to him why you have contravened his order, sir.” The major saluted stiffly, and departed, leaving behind two Vickers guns and four of his men.

Kidd had taken the sidecars without telling Phillip. When he returned, a couple of hours later, with about four hundredweight of steak, and Phillip told him what had occurred, Kidd replied, “Good! We can do with two Mark Ten Vickers! You know what little old Napoleon said, don’t you, old boy? ‘The tools are to him who can use them’.”

“There’ll be a row, Bill. They’re Corps troops.”

“My dear old boy, there’s going to be a much bigger row up here, and don’t you forget it. Why worry? We can use these guns, and also the emma-gee wallahs!”

*

The sun went down behind the western Flanders plain, with its low rises which were Kemmell, Scherpenberg, and other
monts.
It was a lowering moment between the twilight of the day and the rising of flares, after the sweatings of action: a moment when the spirits of each man drew into the loneliness of a world seeming always to have been, and to continue to be, for ever in sweat, squalor, and cold. At least for himself, thought Phillip, there was a roof, the alert face of trusty Adams, the reliability of Naylor, O’Gorman, Bill Kidd, and the four company commanders.

Now to go on his rounds. He set out, walking with his hoe-handle, feeling that while he had it to hand, all would be well.
A purple mist lay upon the Flemish battlefield, like an exhalation of old blood unredeemed, the spirit of despair beyond recognition by those at home, of life abandoned by the departing sun. It was good to see Bill Kidd’s cheerful face, and to be shown by him a sketch, adorned with comic figures where flanking Lewis guns were placed to protect Kidd’s Castle. An inked notice on the wall, with
Under
New
Management,
announced the name-change.

“I’ve marked down here a couple of Boche emma-gees, old boy, to be bagged tonight. Here they are, on this sketch. Now mark ye how Bill Kidd findeth ye olde Spandaus! These young Boche fall for the gag every time. They want me to train them! Bill Kidd is now about to have a private conversation with a bloke two hundred yards east of the Messines road.”

He raised the safety bar of a Vickers, and having done something to the belt, pressed the thumb-piece.
Ta-tata-ta-ta,
as he fired a single, followed by a double, then two single shots.

“It’s the old Bangtitty Bang Bang technique, Lampo. Not everyone knows the trick of single and double-shot pooping. Half a mo’, wait for it!”

Back came the German reply,
Ta-ta.
“That practising churl was out in ’15, I’ll bet a month’s pay! Now I’ll show you how a Class ’18 or ’19 gunner replies.” He moved to the other Vickers, on its tripod pointing through the northern splay. Again he fired five syncopated shots. A score of staccato cracking replies whipped into the concrete wall outside. “Class ’19, old boy! Gives himself away every time. Bill Kidd’s telling you, he knows, old boy, he knows!” with almost childlike
naïveté
that was suddenly endearing.

“You know, Bill, I think you’re the perfect hero of the old
Gem,
Magnet,
and
Union
Jack
Libraries!”

“Did you read them, my Mad Son?”

“I did indeed! Those ha’penny weeklies will win the war!”

“You’ve said it, old boy! But don’t forget old man whiskey. Have a spot. Help yourself.”

After a couple of spots Phillip let fly at one of the enemy machine-gun posts, and got back, as Bill Kidd said, a certain amount of Class ’20 dirt.

Early next morning, through a tremendous reverberation of distant barrage fire, he went round the line again accompanied by O'Gorman, who had polished the hoe-handle with ox-blood boot polish. The day was damp and misty, hanging drops on the eyelashes. They returned under vaporous cover to breakfast of steak rissoles fried with chopped onion. A root of this vegetable had been found hibernating among the ruins, an onion larger than a coconut, which had nourished itself on a fallen chimney heap. It had been kept intact to be shown to him before being cut in half. It was five inches in diameter, but a bit soft in the centre from re-growth.

“It's the mixture of soot and mortar which an onion likes,” explained the cook, a man of Gaultshire, home of champion onions.

“Let's send the other half down to the Brigadier, with the battalion's compliments,” suggested Phillip to Naylor.

At noon the sun broke through the mist. Flies were moving from corners in the concrete roof of the Saschenfeste, where they had held torpid during the winter—big, slow-buzzing insects. ‘Blue-arsed flies', the men called them, obviously bred upon the 1917 battlefield.

“There's a tremendous buzzing of Plumer's bluebottles in here, can you hear them?” asked Phillip, after the Brigade-major had telephoned to say that the Brigadier was on his way up. “I'll hold out the transmitter, then you may hear them.”

“Not ours, unfortunately,” said the voice of Captain Rogers, mistaking what had been said. “It's the Boche plastering Hill 63, I'm afraid.”

“I expect that's all they hear in their drain,” said Phillip, to Naylor. “It amplifies gunfire like hell, I wonder they can stick it.”

Brigade advanced headquarters were under a culvert—where the Wytschaetebeek, now diverted, had once crossed under a farm road—immediately north of the Petit Bois.

When ‘Spectre' arrived he gave further details of the Brigade-major's announcement. Hill 63, near Ploegsteert, was being heavily attacked. He showed him the position on a map. Below Messines the British line was in the shape of a rectangle, almost a redoubt, with the Germans around all sides of it.

“A curious position, Phillip, for our fellows are still up there.” His gold pencil indicated Messines. “But if Hill 63, over there, is taken”—a couple of miles to the south—“we'll have to go back from most of the Ridge, pivoting from where we are here.”

“I see, General. We are to stay in Wytschaete?”

“Yes. Our orders are to hold this village in every event.”

A chill of weakness moved up through Phillip, as ‘Spectre' went on to say that a tremendous fight for Hazebrouck was going on.

“Hill 63 is the key, it overlooks the plain to our main railway junction at Strazeele. At the same time, the high ground here is, if anything, more important. If the Boche gets Wytschaete, we'll have to leave the Ypres Salient.” He paused. “I don't for a moment think it will come to that. The Boche tried in 1914 and failed, again in 1915, and he'll fail now. I thought I'd make sure that we understood one another about the plan of withdrawal, should Messines be given up. In that event we shall withdraw to the Peckham Switch line, which, as you know, hinges here, at Wytschaete, and goes on down past Boegart Farm, south-west of where we are now. There.” The pencil-point lightly touched a pillbox on the Wulverghem road, about half a mile SSW of Wytschaete.

“I understand, sir.”

“How are your men shaping up, Phillip?”

“They're in good shape, due to the presence of Bill Kidd. He really has done wonders in bucking them up. He deserves the M.C.”

“Put in your recommendation, I'll endorse it and send it on. Meanwhile you may care to know that the Divisional Commander, when I saw him under the Scherpenberg this morning, told me that he was very pleased with the 2nd Gaultshires. So, I need hardly add, is your Brigadier.”

“Well, sir, all credit is due to Bill Kidd.”

“By the way, did you authorise anyone to swipe those two Motor Machine-gun sidecars?”

“That was a bit of a misunderstanding, I'm afraid, sir.”

“That's an understatement. That battery comes under Corps troops, and moves on orders from Mont Noir. You'll get badly strafed by ‘Monkey' Montgomery if you allow things like that to happen. Get the guns sent back immediately.”

“I'll see to it, sir. By the way, we'll all be pleased if you'd stay to luncheon.”

“I'd like nothing better.”

Phillip went outside to ask Naylor where the two sidecars were.

“Parked behind the Saschenfeste, sir.”

The drivers were by the cookhouse, hoping for steak and chips. When Phillip returned, ‘Spectre' had written out a message.

“Have this chit taken, with the guns, to Major Bernard Montgomery, Ninth Corps Advanced Headquarters, on Mont Noir.”

“The two Vickers are in the Staenyzer Kabaret, sir.”

“I'll add to my message that they were taken to break up an attack.”

They had lunch outside the Saschenfeste. Three upholstered mahogany chairs were brought into the sun.

“You've got more luxurious quarters than I have. We possess only two kitchen chairs down our drain.”

Oxo-cube soup; fried fillet of horse-steak with onion rings crisp and almost black; ‘spinach' (boiled young nettles) and café-au-lait out of tin mugs.

“‘A good pull up for carmen', Phillip! Give your chef my congratulations.”

Before he left, ‘Spectre' led Phillip apart. “Bill Kidd's all right up to a point, but his chief concern is to demonstrate what a fine fellow is Bill Kidd; the very opposite of your own attitude. If there was a place for a clown on the establishment of a brigade, Bill would fill the job excellently. One should be something of a snob in one's assessment of others, Phillip. I don't mean in the class sense, of withholding altogether the common touch, but in the sense of not allowing oneself to be imposed upon by Tom, Dick and Harry. To do so is to lose caste. I wonder if you know what I mean?” concluded ‘Spectre', kindly, with a rare smile.

“I think so, sir. I've always been told that I have no reserve.”

“To be
too
generous,
too
sympathetic to the faults of others can be a greater fault against oneself. Now I must leave you, I have to visit the Hadrians and the Moonrakers. It was an excellent lunch. Do tell your new quartermaster how I enjoyed it.”

“Quartermaster? Oh, I see! Yes, I'll tell the Boche-eater, I mean horse-eater, General!”

They laughed; everything was going to be all right. But when Phillip was alone once more in the Saschenfeste, he could not control his trembling.

“Send a signal to Captain Tabor, to come here, will you?”

He sat down again, feeling heavy. His eyes were stinging. Damn, was he going to get the virulent kind of influenza which had taken twelve men already down to the field ambulance hospital? He simply must not be ill, now. Picking up the telephone, he saw two instruments, one overlapping the other. He put it down again, and resting head on hands, closed his eyes to rest until Tabs should arrive, but the past began to unwind through his mind, the remote world of 1917 when Jack Hobart was alive. He saw himself riding on Black Prince up the green slopes of Hill 63, which overlooked for miles the flat-lands of the river Lys. The western slopes of the Hill were in part hollowed out to give shelter to a brigade, in connecting chambers known as the Catacombs. From the eastern side of the almost level summit, just before dawn of an early June morning in 1917, he had watched the mines go up under the Wytschaete-Messines ridge. Nineteen mines, holding altogether a million pounds of ammonal and TNT, rising like gigantic yellow and red chrysanthemums, the explosions rocking the earth and causing German reserves in faraway Lille to run out of their billets in terror under a crimson sky, while Plumer's three thousand guns opened for the most successful British attack so far in the war.

Now it was happening in reverse, he thought, as he set out with Tabor, commanding the support company, to look around the ruins for extra strongpoint sites to be wired ready for use. Above the red-and-grey rubble undulations of Wytschaete was an outstanding mound upon the site of the church, which had been knocked down brick after brick, section of wall following arcading, coign, and corbel, by shell after shell until nothing but a debris of masonry and splintered wood remained to settle with the elements. Under the tumulus stood a large concrete shelter, with 4-foot-thick reinforced roof, which had apparently served as a German dressing station in 1917, said Tabor, who had had the entrances cleared, but not what had been found inside. The tremendous bombardments of June had choked the entrances into the original crypt, and what had served as a German dressing
station was now an ossuary of bones and uniforms, decaying gas masks, bottles, surgical instruments, Red Cross armlets and other litter left by large carnivorous rats which, now that shells were falling again, ran squealing along their runs and into tunnels in the rubble.

“What do you think, sir, shall I get the place prepared for my company keep?”

“It would be another death trap, Tabor. The Alleyman's sure to have it taped. Better to avoid it, don't you think?”

Tabor looked relieved. “I wasn't looking forward to cleaning it out.”

“You know,” said Phillip, as they went on, “these brick mounds will act as cushions to high explosive, and limit, to some extent, splinters. No, I don't think that crypt will be a healthy place, Tabs, it will draw all the heavy stuff. Keep clear of it. Well, so long!”

He left Tabor at his company headquarters, and refusing a drink, went on to visit Hedges of No. 2 company. They went down to look at the Peckham Switch line, which was being strengthened and wired in preparation for possible occupation by No. 2 company, when the two front-line companies would withdraw through them. It was a warm afternoon on the lower slopes of the Ridge, which were as yet in dead ground, otherwise not under observation by enemy gunners. Hedges was told about the situation, and given the battalion code word for withdrawal, SPARHAWK.

Accompanied by O'Gorman, he went to visit the colonel of the Moonrakers, and hurrying back, called at the Hadrian headquarters; then back to the Saschenfeste, as the guns, which had been thudding and booming continuously to the south since morning, suddenly swelled to barrage intensity. This was followed by comparative silence. Had Hill 63 been taken? Confirmation was soon coming over the wire. Hill 63 was gone, the southern end of the Ridge was to be evacuated.

Rapid fire of British batteries on the south-western slopes of the Ridge suggested that they were firing off their ammunition before pulling out.

“Brigade-major on the wire, sir.”

He sat on the floor by the D3-converted telephone box, and heard that Merville had fallen, that German patrols were pushing out into the Forest of Nieppe on the way to Hazebrouck. At
once he sent a runner with a written message to Bill Kidd, warning him to prepare to withdraw into Wytschaete, to the position already prepared for, and known by, him.

Heavy shocks of dumps being blown up on the plain of the Lys buffeted the air of the Saschenfeste, seeming to make momentarily solid the ear-drums, up to half a minute after tremors had been felt through the floor. At 5 p.m. he was told that the Brigadier was asking for him.

“You should come back, as soon as the light goes, from the road along the crest,” the voice of ‘Spectre' said through the itching of the wire. “Keep touch with the Moonrakers and Hadrians on your flanks. Have you been over the Peckham Switch?”

“Yes, as far as Boegart Farm. All my company commanders have been warned, I'm about to send out the code word to withdraw to their prepared positions.”

“Where is Bill Kidd?”

“He's forward of the left-wing company, Whitfield's, which is east of the main road, sir. Kidd is in the Staenyzer Kabaret, with those two Vickers guns. Oh, blast, I've forgotten all about them.”

“Is he on the wire?”

“He was, but the line's been dud, I'm told, for the past two hours.”

“Try again, and put me through.”

The signals corporal tried again. “No reply, sir.”

Phillip told ‘Spectre', adding, “I'll go up myself and see him, sir, and let you know at once.”

With a sergeant and two runners and his personal orderly, O'Gorman, Phillip went along one of the many worn and winding footpaths through the brick-and-mortar mounds to the eastern end of the village, past the square, with its miasmic bone-yard under the church; and crossing the road at the eastern end of the village—the Ridge road—distinguishable by patches of cobble and broken rusty lines of the steam tram, continued on down the Oostaverne road to the Kabaret. No
claquement
of bullet came their way across the wastes of No-man's-land, suggesting that Kidd's occupation of the pill-box was well-known, and he was to be scuppered at the right time.

“Bill, we've got to get back to the Peckham Switch. Hill 63's gone, so is Messines.”

“All the more reason for staying here, old boy! An Englishman's home is his castle, you know. Besides, has it occurred to you that this place gives observation on Messines? So forget your Sparhawk tripe, old boy. Have a spot of old man whiskey.”

“The order has come from ‘Spectre'. We're holding on to Wytschaete at all costs, but hinging back from the church to Boegart Farm.”

“We're also holding on to the Staenyzer Kabaret, old boy.”

“The Alleyman is in Merville, and making for Hazebrouck.”

“As I said, old boy, all the more reason for stopping here. What about Haig's ‘Backs to the Wall' message? You sent me a copy last night, surely you read it first?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, it's our backs to
this
wall, as far as Bill Kidd is concerned. Read your copy of
Infantry
Training
Manual,
if you've ever heard of it, old boy, and you'll learn that the bloke on the spot often knows a damn sight more than any Staff wallah miles away out of it. After all, Staff wallahs can only act on what reports are sent back to them, then they cough back more or less the same ideas.”