Behind the Lines (37 page)

The Feld-Webel, standing stiffly to attention, put in a word as the officer signed the receipt form. Without glancing up the officer said something and made a motion of his head. The Feld-Webel saluted quiveringly, about-turned, and bawled an order.

Two men marched the prisoners the ten odd yards up the road to the quarry and halted them against the chalky cliff. The remaining men back by the Feld-Webel were falling in in single rank. That curious feeling of being a spectator still clung to Rawley. He heard a shell whine overhead and detonate on the hillside above him; and he noted with detached interest that it sounded like a British sixty-pounder. He also noticed with the same dream-like detachment that a party of three British prisoners, including an officer, were being escorted up the road.

Alf's face was pale under its covering of dirt, and every few seconds he moistened his lips with his tongue. “I 'ope them blokes 'ave got safety catches,” he whispered hoarsely. “Playin' about with firearms like that.”

Another shell came whining through the mist; its snoring hum increased rapidly to a savage resonant roar and it burst on the side of the road with a majestic pillar of spouting earth and vibrant hum of flying metal. The two men, half-way back to the firing party, had dropped flat with the speed of long practice. One of the firing party lay limply on the ground, the others cowered under the bank. Another savage whirlwind of sound swooped
down through the mist and sent chalky boulders hurtling through the air.

Rawley, crouching at the foot of the chalk cliff, heard an explosive grunt. He lowered his hunched shoulders, and saw Alf lying face upwards beside him. He had the pathetic, uncomplaining look of a bludgeoned mouse. There was a large hole in his chest, and his face had that grey transparent look that Rawley had come to know so well. “Just what I was . . .” he began, but the words ended in a dry gurgle and his jaw dropped.

Another shell detonated lower down the road, and the splinters came droning through the air like giant bees. Rawley saw that the opposite bank was sloping, and not more than ten feet in height. He leapt to his feet, dashed across the road and scrambled up. In the thin mist on the bare slope beyond he was an easy mark, but no bullets followed him. He ran hard for fifty yards, and then dropped into a jog-trot. Intermittent machine-gun fire came from his left, and an occasional shell snored overhead and detonated behind him. Once, half-left, he saw two or three figures in coal-scuttle helmets passing through a broken farm gate, and to his right a few minutes later he saw a little party of British troops trudging along a track westwards.

He reached a half-demolished barn, and lay down panting in the lee of a ragged hedge. A yard or two away the body of a Tommy lay half in, half out, of the ditch. It hung head downwards, and the bayonet scabbard and blue enamel water-bottle were flung upwards across the
sagging back. Rawley's throat was parched with thirst. He had drunk nothing for many hours. He crawled over to the body and took the water-bottle.

He had already had proof how dangerous were his peasant clothes. He dragged the body clear of the ditch and turned it over. Rather gingerly he unbuckled the web belt and pulled off the equipment. The greatcoat was more difficult to remove. The heavy arms gave no assistance. But he managed it at last, and unbuttoned the tunic. That also was not removed without a struggle in which the dead seemed doggedly to combat the efforts of the living.

He pulled off his mud-stained peasant coat, and buttoned on the tunic. The greatcoat would only hamper his movements; that he flung over the half-undressed corpse. His civilian trousers were faded green corduroy, muddy and torn. He unwound one mud-caked puttee from the corpse, but then, overcome with disgust, he cut it in two with the dead man's jack-knife, and bound a half round each shin. He buckled on the equipment, retrieved the steel helmet and rifle from the ditch, and went on. Now at least, if captured, he could claim treatment as a prisoner of war, and among the retreating British troops he would pass unnoticed as a straggler.

The mist was clearing. Splintered trees and the ragged hummock of flattened villages were the only landmarks, and he recognized none of them. The country seemed deserted. Once he saw a cavalry patrol moving along the margin of a splintered wood, and he saw a line of men digging on a distant hill slope. He crossed a broad main
road, running almost at right angles to his line of march. It was deserted, and its bordering trees were shivered stumps.

An hour later he passed round the ragged stump of a
sucrerie
chimney, and ascended a long slope. From the top he had a wide view. The splintered wood and plaster heaps of several villages dotted the hollows and slopes, and to his right, northwards, a grey pimple of chalk stood out prominently on a scarred, flat-topped hill. He knew his whereabouts at last.

At dusk he stumbled down the steps of the cellar. Alf's wire-netting bunk stood against one wall; his own valise rested in a corner. The smart brown suit-case lay under the bunk. He put his shrapnel helmet on the rickety table, and gazed at the familiar place with dazed eyes. It seemed weeks since he and Alf had left it. It was odd that nothing had changed. He dropped wearily upon the bunk and slept.

CHAPTER XXIV

I

Subdued daylight filtered down the cellar steps. Rawley was at breakfast. It consisted of the dead Tommy's iron ration—a tin of bully beef, three biscuits, and tea. After it he filled the petrol cans at the well, stripped off his filthy clothes, and washed. Shaven and dressed again in officer's uniform, he went up the steps. He thought he would walk into Albert and find out what was going on. Gunfire sounded very close, and east and south the sky was smeared with shrapnel bursts. Already he had seen enough to know that things were going very badly for the British Army.

On the Bapaume Road he met a party of about sixty men led by a second lieutenant. Their badges and shoulder-titles displayed a variety of units—British line regiments, highlanders, labour corps, and A.S.C. The young officer said that they were returned leave men who had been formed into platoons on the quay and rushed off to the danger zone. “They are collecting Town-Majors' batmen, cooks, and sanitary men, I'm told, padre,” he said. “I've got some labour corps fellows myself, and I don't believe they've ever handled a rifle before. Thank God we've got a navy. Well, I suppose we shall meet Jerry up this way somewhere. Cheerio, padre.” And the little party trudged on.

Rawley watched them disappear over a rise and followed slowly. He had half a mind to go back and attach
himself to the party. But after all, he knew little about infantry work. If they had been gunners now.

Half-right, to the south-east, the gunfire sounded loudest, and without any definite purpose, he turned off the road and walked in that direction. An hour's walk brought him to the rear of the forward zone. He passed some gun-wagons halted in a hollow, the wagon lines of some battery. Red telephone cable crossed his path and was looped over a rutted track on two tall poles striped black and white. Another hollow was full of cavalry horses, and from behind a bluff to his right two sixty-pounder guns barked every few seconds.

He crossed a narrow, sunken road, up which a four-wheeled-drive lorry was slowly towing a howitzer, and ascended a long, bare slope. From the top he looked across a slight hollow to the debris of a village on the slope beyond. By the powdered rubble heaps a battery of field-guns was in action, and he stood watching the little vivid flashes of light followed by the stabbing “pom, pom-pom-pom-pom” of the salvoes.

As he stood there a solitary figure came along the ridge towards him. It proved to be a young artillery subaltern who saluted punctiliously as he came up. “Can you tell me where I can find the 254th South Midland Battery?” he asked.

“I don't know at all,” answered Rawley; “unless it's that one over there. What is the latest news?” he added.

“I don't know, but things seem to be rather bad.” He laughed a little self-consciously. “You see, padre, I've only just come out, and it's all rather strange at first.”

Rawley nodded. “You haven't chosen too good a time either.”

The young officer went on as though he were glad of somebody to talk to; “Yes, it's awfully strange at first. People told me to go to Division and to go to Brigade and I rode about on wagons and lorries and tramped miles. And I lost my kit too. But I found brigade in the end. They were in a funny little farm-house with a big hole in the roof. They told me to report to this battery. Do you think it's that one over there?”

“I don't know,” answered Rawley. “But I would walk across and ask, if I were you.”

Just as he moved off a shell roared overhead and burst a hundred yards to the rear. The young officer turned and regarded the plume of earth and smoke with a comic raising of the eyebrows. Rawley laughed. “That's a five-nine,” he said. “You want to keep clear of those chaps.”

“I will,” called back the young officer, and strode on.

He had gone barely a hundred yards when Rawley saw him suddenly break into a run. Simultaneously came the hurtling roar of another shell. The luckless flying figure flung itself flat as the ground rocked to the bump and the column of flying clods spouted not a yard from him. The black inverted pyramid subsided, but the figure did not rise. Rawley went across the bare hill slope at the double.

The artillery subaltern was dead when Rawley reached him. His steel helmet had fallen off, and there was a piece of metal as big as a pocket knife embedded in his temple. Poor devil, he had had little enough run for his money.

Rawley walked-slowly away, his eyes fixed wistfully upon the battery among the rubble heaps across the dip. They had but five guns in action; they had probably been fighting continuously since that murderous barrage broke more than two days ago. But they were giving as good as they got—good luck to them. How futile and impotent one felt, being a spectator in times like these!

He turned suddenly back towards that shell crater and its huddled victim. Why not? he asked himself. Every man must be of value at such a crisis; and he was an experienced workman. His own division, he knew, was up North; it was unlikely that anyone would know him. But what did it matter, anyway, as long as they would let him take a hand with the guns.

He went down on one knee beside the body and exchanged the chaplain's Maltese crosses on his lapels for the bronze grenades of the artillery. He gently raised the battered head and slipped from over it the sling of the box respirator; then he detached the leather-bottomed haversack and clipped it to his own Sam Browne. He remembered that he did not know the man's name. It would be necessary to know it, for the poor fellow had been to brigade and they had probably informed the battery that he was coming. He felt between the collar and neck for the string and pulled out the identity disc. Lt. Kemp, it had on it, R.F.A., C. of E. He put on the steel helmet and was ready.

He met the battery sergeant-major as he came up the slope with the jagged brick heaps of the ruined village above him. “254th South Midland, sergeant-major?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The C.O. here?”

He pointed to an officer seated on a heap of rubble. “Over there, sir.”

Rawley went across and reported. The major looked tired and gaunt. He eyed Rawley up and down. “Right section,” he said. “You've got a sergeant who knows his job.” Rawley saluted and went with a new feeling of happiness to the section. Presently the major himself came along and stood watching for some minutes. “You been out before, Kemp?” he asked suddenly. “Yes, sir,” answered Rawley. The major nodded in a satisfied way and walked off.

II

About three o'clock in the afternoon the Bosche attacked. Rawley, who was acting as forward observation officer on the forward slope in front of the guns, saw them streaming over a ridge less than a thousand yards away. The battery awoke to frantic vigour, and the white fleecy puffs of low, bursting shrapnel soon built up a long-wreathed cloud in the still air. It was not easy to see what was happening. The ears were the only guide, and the very extravagance of the sounds made discrimination difficult. The hard rattle of machine-guns rose and fell amid the crackle of musketry. High explosive detonated with its reverberating “c-r-ump” and spouting columns of earth; heavy shrapnel burst overhead with stunning thunderclaps and thick woolly clouds of smoke; and
low-flying aeroplanes roared over the battery and machine-gunned the crews.

Infantry began to trickle back, bearded, hollow-eyed men in the last stages of exhaustion. They trudged past the battery singly and in twos and threes, without a glance to right or left. Heavy machine-gun fire came from the right flank where the enemy had penetrated up a broad, shallow valley. The major had the guns slewed round forty-five degrees and fired over open sights. A depleted squadron of dismounted cavalry came up the slope and passed forward by the guns. The men looked tired but determined. “For God's sake sit tight and stop those fellows coming back,” roared the major to the captain in command as he went by.

The guns were nearly red hot, and mounds of brass cases lay beside the trails; the shields were dented and silvered with bullet and shell fragments; and the personnel had been reduced by one third. But the machine-gun fire grew no louder. It grew spasmodic and became silent for long intervals. The hostile shelling died down. By dusk an unnatural calm reigned over the battlefield.

The men lay down almost where they stood and slept beside the guns. Rawley passed the night among the rubble heaps in a shack made of a groundsheet spread over a broken wall, and he too was asleep almost as soon as he had closed his eyes.

Dawn came cold and misty, and the weary gunners stretched their cramped limbs and warmed their hands on the canteens of hot tea. Heavy rifle fire punctuated by the staccato bursts of machine-gun fire broke suddenly from
behind the thin grey curtain that hung over the ground. Conway, a Canadian subaltern who had spent the night as F.O.O. among the infantry, called for battery fire on S.O.S. lines, and immediately the covers were off and the guns were vomiting frenziedly into the mist. Time passed and the sound of rifle fire dwindled. Odd stragglers came through the mist. Conway said he was coming in. He could see very little, and the Bosches were round behind him on his right. Little parties of infantry passed slowly and sullenly. The major ordered up the teams and halted them in a little dip a hundred yards to his left rear.