27
We came to Noyon!
It was as though the town were a magnet which had attracted all the small traffic from that empty countryside, letting only the big guns on caterpillars escape. The centre of the town, like a great octopus, has seven roads which reach out in every direction. Each of these was banked and double-banked with an interlocked mass of guns and wagons. Here and there frantic officers tried to extricate the tangle but for the most part men sat silent and inert upon their horses and vehicles beyond effort and beyond care.
Army Headquarters told me that Noyon would begin to be shelled in an hour’s time and gave me maps and a chit to draw food from the station, but they had never heard of the brigade and thought the Corps had been wiped out. As I left, the new lad came up and reported that the battery had halted on the outskirts of the town. We went back to it and collected the limbers and tried to take them with us to the station, with hearts beating high at the thought of food. It was impossible, so we left them on the pavement and dodged single file between wagon wheels and horses’ legs. After an hour’s fighting every yard of the way we got to the station to find a screaming mob of civilians carrying bundles, treading on each other in their efforts to enter a train, weeping, praying, cursing, out of all control.
The R.S.O. had gone. There was no food.
We fought our way back to Army Headquarters where we learned that a bombardier with two wagons of rations destined to feed stray units like us had gone to Porquericourt, five kilometres out. If we found him we could help ourselves. If we didn’t find him—a charming smile, and a shrug of the shoulders.
I decided to try the hotel where I had spent a night with my brother only three weeks ago. Three weeks, was it possible? I felt years older. The place was bolted and barred and no amount of hammering or shouting drew an answer. The thought of going back empty-handed to my hungry battery was an agony. The chances of finding that bombardier were about one in a million, so small that he didn’t even represent a last hope. In utter despair one called aloud upon Christ and started to walk back. In a narrow unlit street we passed a black doorway in which stood a soldier.
“Can you give me a drink of water?” said I.
“Yes,” said he. “Come in, sir. This is the officers’ club.”
Was it luck? Or did Christ hear? You may think what you like but I am convinced that it was Christ.
We went in. In one room were sleeping officers all over the floor. The next was full of dinner tables uncleared, one electric light burning. It was long after midnight. We helped ourselves to bits of bread from each table and drank the leavings of milk which had been served with the coffee. Then a waiter came. He said he would cook us some tea and try and find a cold tongue or some ham. I told him that I had a starving battery down the road and wanted more than tea and ham. I wanted food in a sack, two sacks, everything he could rake up, anything.
He blinked at me through his glasses. “I’ll see what I can do, sir,” he said and went away.
We had our tea and tongue and he brought a huge sack with loaves and tins of jam and bits of cheese and biscuits and packets of cigarettes and tins of bully. Furthermore he refused all payment except two francs for what we had eaten.
“That’s all right, sir,” he said. “I spent three days in a shell hole outside Wipers on one tin o’ bully.—That’s the best I can do for you.”
I wrung him by the hand and told him he was a brother and a pal, and between us the lad and I shouldered the sack and went out again, thanking God that at least we had got something for the men to eat.
On returning to the battery I found that they had been joined by six wagons which had got cut off from the sergeant-major’s lot and the entire wagon line of the Scots Captain’s battery with two of his subalterns in charge. They, too, were starving.
The sack didn’t go very far. It only took a minute or so before the lot was eaten. Then we started out, now a column about a mile long, to find Porquericourt, a tiny village some two kilometres off the main road, the gunners sleeping as they walked, the drivers rocking in the saddle, the horses stumbling along at a snail’s pace. None of us had shaved or washed since the 21st. We were a hollow-eyed, draggled mob, but we got there at last to be challenged by sentries who guarded sleeping bits of units who had dropped where they stood all over the place. While my two units fixed up a wagon line I took the Quartermaster with me and woke up every man under a wagon or near one asking him if he were Bombardier So and So,—the man with the food. How they cursed me. It took me an hour to go the rounds and there was no bombardier with food. The men received the news without comment and dropped down beside the wagons. The Babe had collected a wagon cover for us to sleep under and spread it under a tree. The four of us lay on it side by side and folded the end over ourselves. There was a heavy dew. But my job wasn’t over. There was to-morrow to be considered. I had given orders to be ready to move off at six o’clock unless the Hun arrived before that. It was then 3 a.m.
The Army had told me that if our Corps was not completely wiped out, their line of retreat was Buchoire, Crissolles and so back in the direction of Lassigny. They advised me to go to Crissolles. But one look at the map convinced me that Crissolles would be German by six o’clock in the morning. So I decided on Lagny by the secondary road which went straight to it from Porquericourt. If the brigade was not there, surely there would be some fighting unit who would have heard of them, or who might at least be able to spare us rations, or tell us where we could get some. Fighting on scraps of bread was all right but could not be prolonged indefinitely.
At six o’clock we set out as a squadron of cavalry with slung lances trotted like ghosts across the turf. We had only been on the march five minutes when a yell from the rear of the battery was passed quickly up to me as I walked in the lead.
“Halt! Action rear!”
My heart stood still. Were the Germans streaming up in the mist? Were we caught at last like rats in a trap? It couldn’t be. It was some fool mistake. The Babe was riding just behind me. I called him up. “Canter back and find out who gave that order and bring him here.—You, lead driver! Keep on walking till I give you the order to do anything else.”
We went on steadily. From moment to moment nothing seemed to happen, no rifle or machine-gun fire.—The Babe came back with a grin. “The order was ‘All correct in rear,’ sir.”
Can you get the feeling of relief? We were not prisoners or fighting to the last man with clubbed rifles in that cold grey dawn on empty stomachs.
I obeyed the natural instinct of all mothers who see their child snatched from destruction,—to slap the infant. “Find out the man who passed it up wrongly and damn his soul to hell?”
“Right, sir,” said the Babe cheerily, and went back. Good Babe, he couldn’t damn even a mosquito properly!
The road was the most ungodly track imaginable, blocked here and there by 60-pounders coming into action. But somehow the horses encompassed the impossible and we halted in the lane outside the village at about seven o’clock. The Stand-by remained in charge of the battery while the Babe and I went across gardens to get to the village square. There was an old man standing at a door. He gazed at us motionless. I gave him bon jour and asked him for news of British troops, gunners. Yes, the village was full. Would we care for some cider? Wouldn’t we! He produced jugfuls of the most perfect cider I’ve ever drunk and told us the story of his life. He was a veteran of 1870 and wept all down himself in the telling. We thanked him profusely, shook his trembling hand and went out of his front door into the main street.
There were wagons with the brigade mark! I could have wept with joy.
In a couple of minutes we had found Headquarters. The man I’d dosed with champagne on the road corner two days before fell on my neck with strong oaths. It appeared that I’d been given up as wiped out with the whole battery, or at least captured. He looked upon me as back from the dead.
The Colonel had a different point of view. He was no longer shaved and washed, and threatened to put me under arrest for not having rendezvoused at Buchoire! Relations between us were strained, but everybody was in the act of getting mounted to reconnoitre positions so there was no time for explanations or recriminations. Within three-quarters of an hour the battery was in action, but the Quartermaster had found the sergeant-major, who, splendid fellow, had our rations. He functioned mightily with cooks. Tea and bacon, bread and butter,—what could the “Carlton” have done better than that?
And later, when the sun came out, there was no firing to be done, and we slept beside the gun wheels under an apple tree, slept like the dead for nearly a whole hour.