Behind the Lines (11 page)

“Yes, but not properly,” he persisted desperately. “Can't we, Berney?” he added pleadingly.

He slid his arm round her shoulders. Her face was turned from him. He bent his face towards her cheek, but paused with his forehead touching the brim of her hat. “Berney,” he whispered, “Berney, you are not angry with me—for this?”

Her head came round slowly, and he saw her eyes quite close, dark and shining in the shadow of her hat.

“You don't hate me?” he whispered earnestly.

The slow shake of her head was almost imperceptible.

“Then this is really goodnight.” He bent swiftly and kissed her.

Piddock was waiting for him in the main street of the village. They fetched their cycles from the club and began the ride back. Piddock was lyrical. “She's wonderful,” he cried. “Wonderful; they are both wonderful.” He apostrophized the moon with raised hand till Rawley's growling warning only just averted a collision. Then he pedalled cheerfully along crooning ‘Roses in Picardy' to himself, while Rawley rode in silent happy sadness beside him.

IV

It was after midnight when they rode up the quiet street of the village, but a light still showed through the curtains of the mess-room. They pushed open the half-glazed door and went in. Whedbee in pyjamas and British
warm and with a long pipe between his teeth was sitting at the table writing in a squared field note-book. Piddock smote him boisterously on the back.

“Hullo, teacher!” he cried cheerfully. “Want me to help you with your prep! Twice three are six.”

He went over to the little sideboard and poured out a drink. Rawley looked at the half-packed gramophone box on the floor, and unbuckled his Sam Browne in silence.

Piddock turned, glass in hand. “I don't care how long this old war lasts,” he declared, “or how long we stay in smelly old Bluebottlevillers.” He flung out an arm dramatically and carolled nasally: “Though it's only a tumbledown ne-e-st, it's a corner of heaven itself, f-o-r with l-o-ve blooming there why no place can comp-a-are with the little round hole in my v-e-e-st.”

Rawley tapped the half-filled gramophone box with his toe. “What's all this about?” he asked.

Whedbee took off his glasses and sat back in his chair. “We are moving up again tomorrow,” he said. “Taking over gun positions the same night. Reveille is at 4.30. Cane is up at brigade now. The orders came about an hour ago.”

Piddock put down his glass and collapsed into a chair like a pricked balloon. “Oh, my God!” he cried. “And I was just beginning to enjoy life.”

“Where are we going?” asked Rawley.

Whedbee shook his head. “In the orders it only says, ‘the head of the column will pass 11.b.57 at 6.30.' But Cane will know all about it when he comes back.”

Rawley sat down on the edge of the table thoughtfully. “Want any help?” he asked, nodding towards the note-book lying in front of Whedbee.

“No thanks, I've just finished. I would turn in and get some sleep if I were you. Reveille is at 4.30; breakfasts at 5.0, and officers' kits have to be stacked ready outside the orderly room by five-thirty.”

“Why the hell do they always wait till the middle of the night to tell us these things!” growled Piddock. He rose wearily from his seat. “Come on, Rawley—to our virgin couches.” And he went out singing dolefully: ‘Signals have a jolly good t-i-ime, parley vous, signals have a jolly good t-i-ime, parley vous, signals have a jolly good time while poor ruddy gunners go up to the L-i-i-ne, inky, inky, parley-vous.”

CHAPTER VIII

I

The hard-working peasants of Ervillers had gone to bed that night as they had done for the previous week with some two hundred horses and two hundred men comfortably ensconced in their barns and orchards, but when next morning they plodded out to their fields, their barns and orchards were empty and the tiny square behind the church was bare of guns and wagons. B Battery had gone; and the smoking heaps of rubbish on the incinerators and the freshly turned earth on the filled-in latrines were the only marks of their passing.

In the early morning sunlight the long column of guns and wagons uncoiled itself from the village and wound like a dark snake on to the long, straight, tree-bordered
route nationale
that switchbacked out of sight over the rolling down country. In that back area traffic was scarce, and the road unrolled itself ahead white and empty, except for a dusty rumbling motor lorry, and an occasional green car of a divisional supply officer speeding back to Amiens to buy forage. Women worked in the fields. Here the war was remote, though at the entrance of a long, cool avenue hung the black and red flag of an Army Headquarters, and one caught glimpses between the trees of a large flat-fronted château with rows of blistered white shutters closed against the glare.

There was a long halt at midday, when horses were watered and the men ate their haversack rations sitting in groups on the roadside, or lay on their backs in the shade. Then, on again, the column moved on the right of the long, straight road with the tall trees set like palings on either side, while the white chalk dust drifted into eyes and nostrils and set like a mask on the sticky faces of those in the rear.

It was soon after the resumption of the march that Rumbald trotted up beside Rawley and Piddock. “There's a Zepp prowling about over there,” he said. “I suppose I ought to tell the Major.”

“Zepp!” cried Piddock in astonishment. “Holy smoke! Where?” He tilted his cap over his eyes and looked up.

“It's behind that tree now,” said Rumbald. “You'll see it in a minute. There! There it is—just passing to the right of that spire on the hill.” He pointed with his switch.

Rawley looked and recognized the familiar bean-shaped bag of an observation balloon hanging motionless a few miles away.

“By gosh, yes!” cried Piddock with a grin. “Damned smart of you to spot it, Rumbald.”

“I suppose the Major ought to know,” said Rumbald.

“Rather,” cried Piddock, with a wink at Rawley. “If you hadn't spotted it it might have bombed us to Hades before we knew where we were.”

Rawley was about to say something, but was silenced by a grimace. “That will amuse old Cane no end,” cried Piddock, as Rumbald trotted off importantly towards the head of the column.

The appearance of the country changed rapidly as they drew nearer to the Line. The road became congested with traffic. Long dusty convoys of lorries passed ceaselessly. G.S. wagons loaded with hay, pit props or rations passed singly or in pairs. Infantry limbers jogged by on various errands. Despatch riders with the blue and white signal armlet phutted by on dusty motor-cycles. Field kitchens smoked in the orchards around the villages and parties of men in fatigue dress with towels over their shoulders passed on their way to the divisional baths. Notices in English became more frequent on the whitewashed walls—arrows denoting lorry routes, hands pointing to the concert party barn and to the E.F.C. canteen. Lorries, limbers, and G.S. wagons stood drawn up on the cobbled roadside, and barns had their billeting capacity painted on their outside walls. And the open fields on either hand had been worn bare and brown with horse lines, ration dumps, or practice trenches. Tents and Nissen huts were dotted here and there, and in the lee of a copse an observation balloon nestled on the ground. “Rumbald's ruddy Zeppelin in bed,” remarked Piddock, with a grin.

They reached the wagon lines soon after sunset, a shallow depression between two rolling hill slopes. The earth was bare of grass, hard and cracked and scored with wheel ruts and hoof marks. Bell tents, Nissen huts, tarpaulins, and shacks built of ammunition-boxes and sheets of corrugated iron occupied every inch of the ground that was not already given up to trusses of hay, wagons, water-troughs, and brick horse-standings. The
smoke of a wood fire on the outskirts of the camp rose in lazy loops, black against the pearly after sunset sky. Men in grey shirt sleeves moved between the huts and whistled or sang lazy tunes. A homing aeroplane droned its way westwards.

In the fast-gathering gloom the now reduced column began the last part of the journey, that to the battery position. The road ran gently upwards between two low flat hills that were silhouetted now and then against the greenish glow of a Verey light that was itself out of sight below the crest. Other traffic was on the road; the nightly ebb and flow of the line. Infantry limbers bringing up rations, G.S. wagons loaded with reels of barbed wire, screw pickets, pit props, sandbags and other necessities of trench warfare, gun wagons bringing up ammunition, and parties of men in steel helmets, clean fatigue and gas helmets tramping up for some night fatigue. Occasionally to right or left a flash lit the gloom and some unseen gun banged resonantly; otherwise the evening was very still and undisturbed by the jingle and clink of harness and the steady rumble of wheels on the road.

Suddenly a far distant poop was heard, followed a few seconds later by a distant scream that grew rapidly on a rising note as it approached, and ended abruptly in an earth-shaking bump, and rumbling crash some distance ahead.

“It was a dark and stormy night upon the Caucasus,” began Piddock. “The brigand chief and all his men were—”

Again the distant poop was heard. “Here we come again,” said Rawley. There followed that hurtling screech
and rumbling crash. The infantry limber ahead stopped abruptly, and Rawley pulled up his mare with her head over the back board.

“What are we stopping for?” asked Piddock. “Somebody picking wild-flowers?”

He and Rawley were riding at the head of B Battery. The Major had ridden on to the gun position. “I will see if we can pull out of this jam and get on across country,” said Rawley. “No hope there,” he announced a few moments later, after surveying the broad ditch and steep bank beyond.

Shells continued to land somewhere ahead at regular intervals of about a minute. The long mixed column of vehicles moved forward a few yards and stopped, moved forward again and stopped again. A corporal wearing a traffic control brassard appeared out of the darkness. Rawley bent down to him. “What's wrong, corporal? Can't we get on?”

“They are shelling the road ahead, sir,” answered the man. “All vehicles to move at fifty yards interval.”

Gradually, by short advances and frequent halts, like a theatre queue, the battery drew near to the scene of those rumbling crashes that sounded so like a gigantic sack of coals being tipped down a chute. The limber in front had stopped again. The traffic control corporal appeared at Rawley's horse's head. “As soon as this limber is clear, get your leading vehicle through, sir,” he said.

Another rumbling crash close ahead, and the limber was on the move, leaving the head of B Battery next to
run the gauntlet. At a trot, at a gallop the limber receded into the gloom with a man hanging by his elbows from the back. There came another frenzied screech and hurtling crash, but the bright brief glow showed the road clear. The limber was through.

In response to Rawley's signal the leading gun team moved up beside him and stopped. He heard the distant poop, and touched his horse's flanks. He moved slowly forward, and the gun followed. The high-pitched whistle of the shell rent the night sky, and Rawley turned in the saddle and beat the air with his fist. The gun team behind obeyed the order and had broken into a trot when the shell burst with a bright glow on the roadside thirty yards ahead. They passed the danger zone at an easy canter, and heard the next shell scream overhead and detonate harmlessly behind them.

One by one the other wagons and guns crossed the danger area to safety; and lastly Rumbald, bent low in the saddle, came up the road at a furious gallop, his tin hat askew and his horse in a lather.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” growled Piddock, into whom he had cannoned in the darkness. “Bringing the good news to Aix or what?”

“Some barrage that!” panted Rumbald, as he struggled with his field glasses, map case, and haversack that had collected in a bunch round his stomach.

“Barrage! That!—one shell today and another next Thursday week!” cried Piddock scornfully. “You wait till
you get mixed up in one. You'll skip about like Pavlova and wish you had a tin hat down to your boots.”

Cane was waiting for them by a clump of ragged trees that hedged a crucifix outside a village. He led them up the dark, echoing tunnel of the village street, round a corner where the church tower loomed black above them, and made a hard, notched line against the starry sky, to an orchard on the farther side. One by one the guns drove in through the narrow gateway, unlimbered, and were manhandled into the pits on the eastern margin. By ten o'clock the horses were on their way back to the wagon lines.

II

The position was a comfortable one. The orchard wall nearest the enemy was well sandbagged up, and shallow pits had been dug for the guns. Overhead cover from view was provided by greenery covered netting spread between the apple trees. The mess was in a cottage on the far side of the orchard. There was one hole in the roof and one of the corner walls facing east had a ragged bite a few feet below the eaves. The interior, however, was luxurious. There was a mahogany table and a green plush armchair in the mess-room, and an old-fashioned country clock with hands that pointed persistently to five minutes past two. And there was actually a picture on the walls—a coloured print of five bearded sportsmen in a rutted wood ride blazing away with astonishing success
at the cloud of birds that was passing over their heads. In the tangled garden outside, four tree trunks propped wigwam fashion against the wall covered the shattered window and protected it from shell splinters.

“This is all very
bon!
” exclaimed Piddock appreciatively, as he came in from seeing the men into their quarters. He dropped his tin hat with a clatter on the table and stood with arms akimbo looking round. “Well-equipped country cottage on the outskirts of old-world village, within easy reach of main lorry routes and station—casualty clearing—telephone, Verey lighting, and gas, modern ventilation by Jerry, Bosche and Co.; owners leaving for reasons of health. And there's old Rumble Tummy well dug in already—damn him,” he added.