The Golden Virgin (35 page)

Later, over a peg of whiskey-and-soda in his living quarters, he said, “How was ‘Nosey’ Orlebar when last you saw him at the War House? I was runner-up in the middle-weight boxing tournament at Aldershot in ’06, and had the distinction of helping to get ’im ’is nickname, you know. He put me down well and truly in the next round by way of retaliation! Now about this question of tactics that worries you. I think in the circumstances you may wish to consider yourself free of all responsibility in the matter. So if you will be so good as to come with me, I will take you to the D.A.G., and you can have a word with him about it.”

In the Deputy Adjutant General’s office Col. West asked to be allowed to see the Field-Marshal. The response was curt. He was told that no useful purpose would be served by an interview, since he had already been relieved of his command. Any remarks he wished to make should be put in writing, and forwarded through the usual channels.

“Meanwhile would you prefer to go home to England on long leave, or to rejoin a line battalion of your Regiment?”

Captain West asked to be allowed to rejoin his Regiment.

Having written his farewell message to the battalion through
Major Kingsman, he went back to the 7th Gaultshires in the Eastern Division at Carnoy, which with another division of the XIII Corps was to attack opposite Mametz and Montauban, adjoining the French Sixth Army.

*

During the darkness of the next night four raids were carried out by units within the area of the Fourth Army. In one, near Carnoy, enemy trenches were found empty and damaged by shell-fire. In the second, north of Maricourt, the trenches were lightly held, and a prisoner was captured. The third raid took place south of La Boisselle, near the Schwarben Hohe. Here the trenches were strongly held, and the raiders were shot on the wire. The fourth raid was opposite Ovillers, upon the sector where, a fortnight before, Phillip’s party had scrambled into trenches ten feet deep, with a firing step seven feet below a loop-holed parapet built up by coloured dazzle sandbags, and revetted by stakes and withies. The trenches on this raid were full of Germans, one of whom was hauled back. To all questions, except those demanding name, number, and regiment, he replied
Bitte!
Nicht
sprechen!

No question about the depth of dug-outs was asked either prisoner of these raids; no requests for this particular information had come from Division, none from Corps, none from Fourth Army.

*

When was Z-day?

It was still unknown to the troops in the valley of the Ancre. The company waited in barn and billet. Sentries with whistles stood outside to give warning of aeroplanes, revealed by irregular dots of white, the bursting shells of Archibald, the anti-aircraft gun. Well in front of drifting cotton-wool was a tiny white speck, as diaphanous as one of the pale watery ephemeral flies dancing in clouds among the poplars in the water-meadows. The whistle blew; no faces looked up, to where almost imperceptibly high in the blue was moving the frail wraith with black crosses.

“Anyone got any rumours about Z-day, skipper?”

“Nothing from the Adj yet, old sport.”

Excitement among the herded men was intense. Bets were made, in plinketty plonk (
vin
blanc
),
rhum,
and
vin
rouge
—to be paid in Brussels; or Berlin.

“A gunner officer told me the attack had been put off!”

“Did you hear, the Hun has asked for an armistice, after mutiny down at Verdun!”

“Well, you see, Asquith has shares in Krupps, and so he’s
delaying the attack as long as possible, for the Germans to increase their armaments!”

“That’s bloody rot, Cox! Like his wife visiting German officers at Donnington Hall!”

“Well, don’t lose your wool, One-piecee!”

Clouds moved in drifts across the summery blue, wind poured into the valley of the Ancre, tributary of the Somme, from the south-west. The shadow of Nimbus raced the golden glow of Phoebus across the undulating country that was to be the battlefield. Again the concentrated bombardment of destruction broke upon the air, while the ground seemed to be shaking in one continuous rumbling, as of the boiling of an immense cauldron. When it had boiled itself over individual salvoes of batteries could be heard, but seldom a moment in the day or the night passed without detonation.

“Jerry’s copping it,” said Pimm to Phillip, with dark satisfaction. The bombardment continued all the next morning, but at 3.30 p.m. it ceased abruptly. The silence was blank and irritating.

What had happened?

Why were so many scout aeroplanes going over?

Flight after flight of D.H.2’s, Nieuports, Sopwith two-seaters and F.E.2b’s passed in formation above slower reconnaissance B.E.s.

A rumour went around that the Kaiser had offered to surrender, that the R.F.C. were sending planes to escort a delegation of staff officers to deliver terms.

“From the latrine, like all the others,” said Captain Bason. “Hell, I’m a platoon commander short, now Ray has gone sick, with a dose of clapp.”

“So he’s got away with it?”

“You’ve said it, old sport. He’s just been taken down to the field ambulance. You’ll take command of the company while we’re in, if anything happens to me.”

“What about Cox?”

“The order remains that all seconds-in-command of companies are to remain behind, with two sergeants per company, to form a cadre on which to reform the company in case of heavy losses. Cox is to be promoted to Captain.”

“Does second-in-command go by seniority, skipper?”

“Sure thing. Cox is senior, isn’t he, to you? Anyway, he’s going to the Chinese Labour Corps being formed now, as he speaks the lingo. He put his name in for it a week or two back, when we were at Querrieu. That rumour about the Kaiser asking for peace is
bilge, by the way. Those aeroplanes went out to photograph the shelled sectors, protected by scouts. I saw Quarters just now. He’s just come from railhead, and says Duggie Haig has moved his advanced headquarters to Beauquesne, only a dozen miles back, so it won’t be long now.”

Phillip walked down the muddy street to Cox’s billet. It had rained during the night and early morning. Cox was lying down on his flea-bag, a bundle of old letters and a bottle of whiskey beside him on the floor.

“Hullo, One-piecee. What brings you here?”

“Cox, why did you tell Bason you were senior to me? You know you’re not. I was gazetted ten days before you.”

“So you’ve got the wind-up, have you, One-piecee? Have a choc.”

“No thanks. I hear you’re going to the Chinese Labour Corps, anyway.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Cox, letting his eye-glass fall as he sat up. “Has it come through?”

“I don’t know. Bason said your name had gone in. The point is that I was gazetted on March the fourteenth last year, and you on March the twenty-fourth. It’s in the Army List.”

“My dear One-piecee, you appear to forget that I was appointed second-in-command before you rejoined. So I am senior in service with the company. Help yourself to some whiskey, if you don’t mind drinking out of the bottle.”

“I think you ought to tell Bason the truth.”

“My dear One-piecee, do you want Bason and everyone else to know that you’re snowing the white feather? They will think that, you know. After all, I’m a man of thirty-five, and my wife is going to have a baby. And I’m going any moment to the Chinese Labour Corps, as an interpreter, so if you kick up a shindy, it will be obvious that you are trying to save your own skin.”

“You told me you were twenty-five, when we were at Seven-oaks.”

“Everyone lies about his age in the army. I did, to get in quickly. Well, go and tell Bason, if you feel like that. Only don’t be surprised if everyone thinks you’re yellow, will you? How are the pigeons? Why not go and see? I’m rather busy. Tootle-oo, One-piecee!”

*

Phillip had been appointed Pigeon Officer for the battalion. When Captain Bason had asked casually what he knew about birds, “of the feathered sort, of course, old sport”, and then said that the
Adjutant had suggested him for the job of Pigeon Officer, he felt relief mingled with regret that he would not be with the men of his platoon any longer. They seemed to like him, and he did not want them to feel deserted.

However, the job was only part-time, to last only until the attack. The birds arrived from the Corps Mobile Loft (which was built on to a London omnibus) in a large wicker basket strapped on the back of a despatch rider riding a Triumph motorcycle. The corporal showed Phillip how to take a bird out, by holding the legs placed backwards in the hand, together with the wing-pinions, and departed. Later, a bag of split peas, tares, limestone grit, and grain arrived from the Quartermaster. The birds were fed and watered from zinc trays attached to their baskets. They were to be taken into action housed in smaller baskets, one for each company. Having showed four chosen runners, one for each company, how to hold the birds, and to remove the aluminium leg-capsule for the message, the job of Battalion Pigeon Officer was practically ended.

Now he went to look at the birds, which were kept in a pannier in a barn. One bird in the top compartment of the basket had laid an egg, while another in the lower section was trying to get at it, udging by the way it was croodling and looking up at the shiny white shell through the wickerwork. Did pigeons suck eggs? He decided to find out, and having taken the egg,
put it in the lower section. At once the pigeon bowed to it, dropping its wings before straddling the egg
and settling upon it, in one corner. While he was watching, Pimm, who was looking after the birds, joined him. Pimm had kept pigeons in civvy street, he said, and so had been given the job of carrying the advance basket, which was to accompany Phillip who, as the senior subaltern in the company, was to lead the attack.

“That’s an old bird, a cock, sir,” he told Phillip. “Jimmy, I call ’im. I’ve been watching Jimmy. He wants only one more egg, and he’ll be happy. An old cock will always brood eggs; he love a squab, you see, and cares for it all right. Some people think pigeons too free with one another’s mates, in a manner of speaking, sir, but I’ve proved the contrary. Like a gander, sir, a cock pigeon will always look after a pair of young birds, what we call squabs, or some calls ’em squeakers. I love to see ’em, sir, with young ’uns. I used ’av an old cock what we called Romper, what used to caggle a hen away from another cock, not exclusive for the tread, like any old barnyard cockerel, sir, if you understand my meaning, but to get her to lay him a couple of eggs, in a nest he’d already prepared for
them. Once laid, Romper never so much as looked at her, but cuddled them eggs between his ’ams until they was ’atched. What a daddy he was, too! Nothin’ was too good for them squeakers, and he kep’ by them until long after they was grown up, a feeding of them with ’is milk, sir.”

“This old bird won’t have much chance to hatch that egg,
I fancy.”

“By rights Jimmy ought to be took out of the kit, sir. He won’t fly back to the Corps Mobile Loft, sir, but come back here, with any message. It’s home to a bird, sir, cock or hen, where their eggs is, what they’ve fixed on in the eye. Jimmy’ll be ’overing about back here, come to look for ’is egg.”

“Poor old bird. What ought we to do with him?”

“I’ll keep ’im back, sir, in the basket. He can come for a walk acrost Jerry’s lines with us, sir, like he was a mascot. Then Jimmy can come back with us when it’s all over, can’t you, Jimmy boy?”

Phillip tried to ease his fears by telling himself that it was Cox’s wife and her unborn baby that mattered, and for this reason he would say nothing to Bason about seniority. With Pimm beside him, he would be all right. He would stick with his boys, and damn the captaincy. He went to see how they were, and sat with them and smoked his pipe in the barn, while the rain fell and the guns made a continuous rumbling; bringing the rain, everyone said.

That night the battalion went into the line for the attack. There they spent the rainy darkness, each man laden with 66 lbs. of equipment, while the squalls lashed down, making white or rather grey their uniforms and rifles. Soon after midnight they filed out of the trench, and were brought back, to make what shelter they could in the wretched hour before dawn upon the streaming ground. Phillip made a fire and sat by it, waiting for daylight.

In the morning everyone in the Ancre valley knew that the attack had been put off. Drivers astride mules drawing limbers shouted the news to G.S. waggon drivers; lorry drivers flogging ration cigarettes in estaminets near Amiens talked about it as they downed
café-rhums
made from coffee that was more than half chicory.

“I believe,” said Bason, in the continuing silence of the German guns, “that Jerry knows all about this attack, and is waiting for us. They’re damned clever, you know, the Germans. Anyway, we’ve got two days now before Zero, but keep it under your hat.”

*

During the preceding month of May General von Bulow, commanding the Second German Army, had proposed from his headquarters
at Bapaume “a preventive attack astride the Somme”. On 6th June he sent a report to O.H.L., the German Headquarters in the West, at Mezieres, containing the following:

On 15 June, when the Kaiser visited Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria’s Sixth Army Headquarters at Douai, Lieutenant-General von Falkenhayn, the All Highest’s Chief of Main General Headquarters Staff, said that he could not understand why the British should attack on the Somme. In the event of success, he said, the further fighting would take place in Belgium, which would be devastated, a thing the Allies would not want; nor would they want Northern France, with its rich coal mines and iron industries, laid waste.