V. THE MOVE UP (1)
We had been in our billets in the village behind the Aisne a week when the order came to move. It came suddenly one evening at seven o'clock, as orders do at the Front, and by seven-thirty we were on the march. Where to, why, or for how long no one had any idea. Perhaps we were moving to a threatened point of the line, perhaps troops were being concentrated for an attack, perhaps the whole division, which had suffered heavily since the outbreak of war, was being replaced by a fresh division and was being sent back to the base to refit, reorganize, and fill its gaps.
As we marched along we attempted to make deductions from the direction we were taking. One thing was plain, the road led directly back from the line of the river and the enemy. It might be, of course, that after going a mile or two we should swing right-handed and move along parallel to the enemy but out of reach of their guns till we came behind some point where we were wanted, and then be moved up again. We climbed up out of the valley and crossed a high plateau of waste land. Goyle told me that the German rearguard of horse artillery and cavalry had dashed pell-mell across this plateau in their retreat from the Marne, hotly pursued by our cavalry and guns, pausing at intervals to exchange shots with their pursuers, crashing on down the valley and across the Aisne, where they had made the stand they had maintained ever since. It must have been a fine sight to have seen the pursuer and pursued crossing the plateau.
Four or five miles back we passed some troops bivouacking by a farm.
"What are you?" called Goyle.
"The ——s," came a rather sullen answer.
It was the —— Regiment—all that was left of it—perhaps a hundred men. They had been badly cut up a few days before, and, no longer existing as a regiment, had been withdrawn from the firing-line.
A mile or two further on we came to the end of our journey for that day—a village where we were to billet. Our billeting officer had gone ahead, and we had not long to wait in the road before he came to show the company their billeting area. In the darkness it took a little time to get the men settled. They naturally resented being put in pigsties, which Edwards, who had no sense of smell and only felt the straw with his feet, tried to do with his platoon. Then Mulligan, who was always a bit hot on these occasions, annexed a barn, which was just within our boundary, for A Company, and, successful in this, attempted to take over a kitchen right in the heart of our area for the use of A Company officers.
When I went to eject him from this he adopted the tone, "We must all share in on service," and as I still preserved a stony countenance, obtruded the nose of a bottle of rum from his haversack and said we would have some hot toddy when all was quiet, whereupon, on striking a bargain that I should have the bed and he a mattress from it on the floor, I let him remain.
Some electric torches we had had sent out from England were of the greatest use at times like this, as they enabled us to flash them into the interior of barns and get the men properly settled in places where there was room for them and where they could sleep in comfort. Also, as we were well away from the firing-line, we could have "Black Maria," our mess van, with us, and hot meals when we got in and before we started in the morning.
We remained in the village all the next day, moving off just before nightfall the following evening. During the day I went to pay a visit to some of the other units of the brigade. The Westshires were billeted further down the village, and had passed the night as comfortably as ourselves, but the Dorchesters had not been so fortunate, and had had to sleep in a field, as there had been no billeting space left for them. Greatly conscious of the warm bed I had just left, I surveyed with a sympathy which they did not seem to appreciate the little "boovey-hutches" and lairs of straw which they had made for themselves. The artillery, too, had had to sleep out, to be near their guns and horses, and were in a bad temper. One young artillery officer was very sarcastic about the mystery which was being made of our movements—the marching by night and hiding by day with no hint as to destination—and said several unflattering things about red tape, brass hat rims, and other insignia of staff. He was an amusing fellow with his wit sharpened to the point of acidity by the cold cheerless night he had spent in the open, and I stood listening to him for some time. I could imagine him standing between his section of guns directing their fire in the early days of the retreat, when the enemy pressed on us in their masses and every gun had to fire while there was a man left to work it. He would probably have been very witty and deliberate about the objective of the last shell.
Our second night march was longer than the first, and we covered eighteen miles. We appeared still to be going farther and farther away from the enemy, but at one point, nearing the end of the march, we heard faintly the sound of guns. They were the French guns, we were told, so we gathered that we were somewhere behind the French lines. A long climb down took us to a bridge over a river, guarded by a very bored-looking French reservist who looked at us suspiciously, and was, I felt sure, longing for the excuse for a row with somebody, just to relieve the monotony of life. Crossing the bridge we left the main road short of the town—to the keen disappointment of the men—and turned up what looked like a private drive through woods. After going about a mile and a half we came on a group of buildings which proved to be our destination for the night. It was dark and not easy to see much, and we accepted placidly a staff officer's information that the regiment's billeting area lay on the right side of a small stream. "You will find a farm—it was all I could do for you, but I expect you will all be able to get into it," he said. Tired and footsore as we were, we felt certain we should be able to fix ourselves up anywhere. The farm comprised three cottages, a large building and a huge haystack with a corrugated iron roof. We got most of the men on the hay under the corrugated iron roof. Of course, as soon as they lay down they pulled out cigarettes and pipes for a satisfying smoke after the long march. This made Goyle dance with fury, and he sent me up on top of the stack to have all the cigarettes put out. It seemed hard on the men, but he was quite right, as they would certainly have set the stack on fire.
Having got the men settled I went off to find the officers' quarters. These proved to be the two lower rooms of an empty house. There was no furniture in the house at all, simply a thick layer of straw on the floor. However, it had been a long march, and the straw looked inviting enough. I got my valise off the transport, unrolled it in a corner, took off my boots and coat and slid into my sleeping-bag. Others did the same in different corners of the room. The room was not very well lighted, and one or two late comers, who stepped on people's faces or feet in their efforts to find a corner for themselves, came in for a good deal of abuse. In a quarter of an hour we were all sound asleep. When we woke in the morning we took stock of our quarters, and found they were not so sumptuous as tired limbs and thankfulness to be able to stretch ourselves out rolled up in blankets had led us to suppose. For by daylight we could see by inscriptions scratched on the walls that the last occupants of the place had been a company of the —th Regiment of Turcos. We had been sleeping in what for a time had been a barracks for native troops. On going outside the building and taking a stroll we discovered a pretty little château which the officers of another regiment had annexed for their use. They had all slept in beds, washed in comfort, and were having breakfast on a smooth green lawn, surrounded by flowers. We had nowhere to have breakfast except by the side of a wall outside the Turcos' house, and we felt we had done badly over our billets. However, the etiquette of billeting gave the château to the other regiment who had first taken it, and we had to put up with what we had got.
The next night we set out on the march again. The march was twenty miles, and proved a severe task for the men after their long spell in the trenches, coming as it did on top of the eighteen-mile march of the night before. It is always the second or third march which tells most on men, and after the first dozen of our twenty miles they began to fall out, till there was a long string of stragglers behind the brigade. In vain the company officers tried to keep their companies together, nothing could make the weary, footsore men keep their fours. Tired as some of the officers were themselves, it was a heavy strain passing up and down the company, stopping to issue "falling out" tickets and running on to catch up the column again. The hardest task of all fell to the subaltern who was detailed to bring up the rear party, and who was not allowed to come into billets until the last man was in. To this unfortunate officer fell the task of trudging along at half a mile an hour behind a group of dead-tired, limping, footsore men. He got into billets four hours after everybody else.
The officers' billets on this occasion were better than those of the night before, for we found a house which had been used by German officers when the town was in the enemy's hands. The house was large and comfortable, and belonged to the mayor of the town. It had been cleared of all valuables, but whether the mayor had done this himself before his departure, or the German officers had looted the place, I cannot say. From the look of things I should imagine that the mayor had taken away all he could and the Germans anything that was left. They had evidently broken open a writing-desk and some drawers, and scattered the contents all over the place. I was guilty of a little looting on my own account, as I found a tattered paper-covered copy of "Madame Bovary," and not having finished it when it was time to leave, slipped it in my haversack.
We again spent the day around the billets, and as we had a mail with a sack of parcels sent up with the ration convoy we had plenty to occupy ourselves. On active service washing is not necessarily done before breakfast. It is too elaborate a ceremony to be done in a hurry. First a complete outfit has to be got together; one may have a razor but no shaving-brush, or a piece of soap but no towel, or a hairbrush but no comb; possibly one has nothing at all, in which case one is treated as a general nuisance, and borrows from others with difficulty. But, as a rule, with a depleted cleaning outfit of, say, a razor, a comb and a bit of sponge, the rest can be collected and spread out on a towel. The toilet is then a leisurely process, after which, feeling very clean and fresh and superior, one strolls across to the mess van in one's shirtsleeves for a glass of vermouth and a cigarette. After washing there were the letters brought in by the mail to answer, and then lunch and a couple of hours' sleep.
At dusk we moved off again, this time for a very short march, for four miles brought us to our destination, and we were only moved on a little way in order to make room for other troops following on behind.
A night in the village and off we started once more. At one point we passed our Divisional General. From the cheery greeting one of his staff officers gave me I surmised something was on foot, and this conjecture proved right, for on reaching a town ten miles distant our billeting orders were suddenly cancelled, and we were told to go on another four miles and entrain. The remainder of the way led through the forest of Compiègne. It was a bright moonlight night, and the forest by night was incomparably lovely. With moonlight playing quietly through the branches it was hard to believe that the forest had ever held troops creeping from tree-trunk to tree-trunk seeking to take each other's lives. In the earlier days of the war we could imagine rival cavalry patrols stealing quietly towards each other along the grass-turfed, shady side of the broad white road, and many a small, bloody encounter must those old trees have seen.
We came on the siding where we were to entrain in a piece of open common. It took some manipulation to get forty men into each truck, but at last we all settled in, a bugle was blown, and we stole away towards the north.